


peripheral

by symmetrophobic



Category: GOT7
Genre: M/M, allusions to psychological abuse and adultery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-24
Updated: 2016-02-07
Packaged: 2018-05-18 19:59:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 35,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5941239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/symmetrophobic/pseuds/symmetrophobic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>the last thing that kunpimook, or bambam, as jackson calls him, anyway, needs in his life right now is someone just as clever, if not smarter, than him. but then again fear's a reassuringly double edged blade, and curiosity can kill you just as easily as it can make you fall in love. got7 corporate!au.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> dedicated to my baobei [](http://lahdeedah000.livejournal.com/profile)[lahdeedah000](http://lahdeedah000.livejournal.com/) for taking all my tears and whining over this fic over the two months it was written and leaving comments all over it that i need to read to feel safe about life ;A;

 

Kunpimook Bhuwakul meets Kim Yugyeom in late summer.

He’s just begun work at the company bequeathed upon an older (and seemingly rather coincidental) friend he’d met whilst doing international studies who’d apparently been so successful his work had taken him all over the world and then some. Jackson’s a rich man, living the life of the regular inheritor of a great business rooted in the _guanxi_ network of Hong Kong in his late twenties to the fullest, and to the outsider it would seem nothing more than a stroke of luck that Kunpimook had ended up in the older man’s good books, enough to keep the good relations stoked and burning till the time it served him.

(And that time, predictably, is now, and many more occasions to come, Kunpimook certainly hopes.)

But as the son of a celebrity stylist favoured by the rich and powerful and a chauffeur attending to mostly the same crowd, Kunpimook’d been brought up understanding that many strings existed in this world, invisible to the eye of the untrained, and that pulling the right ones might just lead to a windfall. He’d seen his potential string dangling loosely from the wrist of the loud mouthed, scornful senior from Hong Kong taking his major, swaggering around the common areas with his seemingly unending supply of branded clothes, bags and snapbacks, just thirsting for adoring attention from the masses, and had subtly snaked a pincer grip onto it, unwavering and unseen.

And now, settling into a stable, comfortable office job with a starting pay that would make most grown men drool in envy, and fresh out of college, too, Kunpimook decides that those three years of invested care and attention ( _sucking up_ is such a crass, unseemly term, don’t you think?) have finally paid up, and with interest.

But then comes the invitation Jackson extends to lunch, to “show him around the place and the people”, as Jackson puts it, or, in real talk, to show Kunpimook the place and the people and how they’re all owned by Jackson’s money. And of course, as the ever grateful and adoring dongsaeng, Kunpimook graciously accepts, adding the just the right amount of nervous glances and hesitant smiles as he does so, as if ever so afraid to think that he might _ever_ be deserving of everything Jackson’s so benevolently bestowed upon him.

It’s not a _lie_ , per se, because Kunpimook _is_ grateful, _is_ technically as undeserving of the indulgent overflow from the affluence of men like Jackson, but there is a stark difference between people like him and the people that don’t grasp opportunities when they’re so kindly proffered- the people that cling to the flimsy, ridiculous notion of dignity in dirt-caked fingers, who insist on scrabbling through the refuse of this world when ladders are all around them, helpfully extended, of course, if the right words are crooned to the right people. And it shows, this great divide, from where they start off in society, because Kunpimook’s certainly had a helpful boost up his own ladder. It certainly isn’t wrong, he reasons, for if he doesn’t move in to charm the excess of their extravagance off their fingertips, someone else most definitely will.

And Kunpimook can’t have that, can he?

So he stays and he feeds Jackson’s ever growing ego with the practised and crafty tongue of a boy trained by two parents, professionals in the business of pampering the rich and wealthy, and yes, _maybe_ he stays around with open arms to catch the reaping of the most wonderful benefits. He reasons that he’s a _friend_ , definitely, a fellow woe-sharer of being a foreigner in the country and a grave listener to the petty problems that spew like the indolent froth off a freshly-poured mug of beer from Jackson’s ever frivolous mind, and slaps away the incessant questions about his morality that flicker around his head like mosquitoes.

He feels intelligent. Irresistible. And so, so very invincible it makes him sick to think about it.

And that all starts to change the afternoon he meets a man by the name of Kim Yugyeom.

*

Kunpimook ducks his head obligingly through Jackson’s boisterous introductions, pretending he isn’t keeping a sharp ear out for the names, both of the men and the companies behind their backs, at the table. It’s a group of men like Jackson, he assumes, at first. All rich, all young, all so-called artists or purveyors and appreciators of the subject, all infected through and through with the delusion of elitism and its standard set of rules.

Kunpimook feels like he’s arrived at a buffet. Except the term, in this case, has nothing at all to do with the food (which is excellent, by the way, and the bill, of course, fought to be footed by the wonderful gentlemen he’s surrounded by).

“You’re doing what, again?” Im Jaebum, CEO of some company manufacturing a third of the world’s engineering necessities, asks across the table as they settle down for appetisers. He speaks with the clear, straightforward air of a man who’s extremely rich and has been treated so all his life, professionally whitened and fixed teeth glinting like pearls in every rehearsed, million-dollar smile. Exactly Kunpimook’s type, he thinks carefully.

“Accounting, sir,” he nods politely, before continuing sheepishly. “But I’m very good at it, as Jackson-hyung might say.”

“ _Sir_? Call me hyung,” he laughs, and the rest of them chime in accordingly. “I’m not _that_ old yet.”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t know about that,” Jackson smirks across the table, and the man at Jaebum’s side, dressed simplistically yet tastefully in a white dress shirt and slacks that probably cost as much apiece as Kunpimook’s monthly salary, lets out a laugh that sounds like glass shards and crystal bells at the same time.

“He’s right, you know,” Jinyoung, Kunpimook remembers now, says smugly, and though Jaebum’s eyes flash there’s a serene smile on his face. “You _are_ getting a little rusty, don’t you think?”

“Careful, Jinyoungie,” he taps the other man’s hand in playful warning. “Our partnership does only extend this far, you know.”

“ _Partnership_?” the man on Jackson’s left, Mark, scoffs- some Taiwanese-American billionaire, inheritor of his father’s impeccable energy business, partner to Jackson’s thriving electronics manufacturing chain. The ten thousand dollar timepiece on his wrist glints purposefully as he sets his hands on the table, folded with practiced ease. “That what you’re calling it now, Jaebum?”

“Better than what you’ve got over there to your right,” Jinyoung sends back an innocent, yet somehow indecent smile, to which Mark concedes defeat, raising his hands in half surrender, while Jackson sends him an affronted look, and the table breaks out into obligatory laughter.

It’s a sort of noncommittal hostility they’ve got going on, Kunpimook notices, a deadly banter that keeps everyone comfortably on their toes at all times. But then Jaebum gestures to the man on his right, a man, Kunpimook realises with some unease, his eyes had skipped over the first time he’d sat at the table. Maybe it was something about his demeanour, silent, watchful, passive, that made him fade into the background, like a piece of furniture, deliberately insignificant and invisible.

(And Kunpimook wonders when he’d become like any of the others at this table, so quick to dismiss someone like him.)

“You haven’t met Yugyeom, I believe?” Jaebum says, and Kunpimook nods assent, eyes open with a pleasant smile so rehearsed it looks natural, but which somehow trips up a little at the depth in this man’s eyes. “I believe the two of you have a lot in common.”

And it’s in that moment, as their gazes finally publicly and cordially lock across a table of men more powerful and rich than both of them will ever be combined, Kunpimook Bhuwakul learns that Kim Yugyeom’s eyes are like diamonds in darkness. Invisible, meanings and reflections all expertly hidden, waiting to cut people open, julienne their minds, and it frightens Kunpimook, that anyone else at this table could be just as shrewd as him.

(Perhaps even more.)

“Nice to meet you,” Yugyeom offers, nodding by a fraction, and Kunpimook can almost see him tipping an imaginary hat, ever respectful and formal such that it’s sort of funny. “I work at JYP Industries. Architecture and design.”

“He means to say,” Jaebum rolls his eyes, clapping a hand that’s both friendly and strangely proprietary on Yugyeom’s back. “He’s my cousin. Our parents were close, so I pulled a few strings once he came out of college,” he waves a careless hand, as if waiting for the story to write itself in the air. “And he hasn’t disappointed me since.”

“Yeah, I’d be in awe, if this wasn’t like, the hundredth time you told that story,” Mark rolls his eyes, but Kunpimook’s noticing the way Jackson swells a little, sending a pointed glance in his direction.

 _Ah_. It clicks, then. Jackson had only hired him and brought him to this lunch to get one up on Jaebum, to make him out to be as influential and charitable as the other man. Kunpimook files that byte of information away neatly, before quickly tuning back into the conversation, just as Jackson clears his throat.

“Kunpimook Bhuwakul, or just Bambam, because heck is his real name a mouthful,” he gestures, and Kunpimook responds with the appropriate embarrassed smile. “I met him while doing international studies, and he’d sounded pretty interested in overseas business and accounting, so,” Jackson shrugs. “Doing a pretty swell job so far too, don’t let him fool you.”

_As if Jackson had been paying attention to him at all since he’d gotten him the job._

Jaebum doesn’t seem to be listening, instead continuing his conversation with Mark, as though Jackson’s words had been a stray breeze through the tablecloth.

“I was only doing so to let Yugyeommie here know that he’d finally have a _friend_ ,” Jaebum pretends to look scandalised, gesturing across the table to Kunpimook, who nods, though something cold and hard he thought he’d killed in himself a long time ago stirs in indignance at the statement.

For a moment there, he feels like a kid, honestly. Shoved into a playpen with another little boy to make his acquaintance while the grown-ups played with million dollar contracts and doled out obligatory little gifts of money every so often.

But then again, Kunpimook’s long convinced himself that he doesn’t care. Not anymore. As long as he gets to decant his share of sweet wealth from said grown-ups, he really doesn’t mind playing the dumb kid everyone wants him to be.

Maybe.

“We’ll get along well,” Yugyeom says, though his voice, as velvety and soft as it is, suggests he thinks they’ll do anything but that. But Jaebum either doesn’t notice or he doesn’t care (probably the latter) because he launches into a discussion on the latest stock news, voice cutting and confident as he quotes statistics and trends, as if daring anyone to argue with his predictions on the market.

This leaves lesser men (or so they think) like Kunpimook to sit back and digest all this new information (and the excellent _hors d'oeuvres_ , might he add), eyes flicking across ion bracelets and branded suits and glossy chrome watches, lazily tallying the net worth of each man at the table.

Until his eyes land on Kim Yugyeom, Kim Yugyeom with his calm, disquieting stare that seems to saw precisely through the closed and shuttered windows of Kunpimook’s eyes into his mind, Kim Yugyeom who seems to pry open every wall Kunpimook’s built up to safely observe the world from the inside with ease, like he knows them brick for brick, thought for thought.

(Because he’s built them himself.)

But Kunpimook shakes those diamond eyes from his skull as the main courses arrive (his being the same as Jackson’s, might he add, part of the whole idol worship package he sells himself in), determined to let nothing stand in the way of his ascent to success.

And certainly not someone like Kim Yugyeom.

*

The next time he meets Yugyeom, they’re expected to converse. He knows this because of the way Jaebum directs the two of them, with a lazy, infinitesimal flick of his wrist that somehow conveys a world of meaning, the next time they meet, this time at a splendid dinner party thrown by Mark to commemorate his company’s seventy-fifth anniversary.

Kunpimook’s purposefully admiring his second flute of complimentary champagne (Moet and Chandon, ’97, if he’d read the label on the bottle the waiter had been sweeping around with just now correctly), taking obligatory sips and keeping Jackson in the corner of his eye, lest the older man decide to have him around at his convenience to introduce him to anyone, when the unwelcome shadow falls upon the deep rug in front of him, silhouette soft in the light of the thousand candles in the chandelier above.

“Good evening,” Kim Yugyeom is holding an identical flute of champagne, dark blue dress shirt buttoned up to his throat, Gucci stretched velvet evening pants professionally tailored to taper smartly down his exceptionally long legs. “Or would “hey” be better?”

Kunpimook’s unable to hold back the noise he makes, regarding the taller man with an incredulous look. “Are you making _fun_ of me?”

“Not really,” Yugyeom shrugs, taking another sip of his champagne. “Hey works better for me too.”

“Is that so,” Kunpimook bristles anyway, turning away to look pointlessly in the direction of the glittering professional dancers Mark had casually hired, to entertain the guests, while he made connections and sealed underhanded deals with the more important visitors for tonight.

“Don’t act like you’re one of them,” Yugyeom says mildly, lowering his glass. In Kunpimook’s hand, the glass fits neatly, but in his, it’s dwarfed, like the cutlery from a doll’s tea set. “You know we’re not, and won’t ever be.”

“You must be an expert on the subject,” Kunpimook can’t help the cutting undertone to his comment- he isn’t as good as he’d like to be at concealing how he truly feels, not yet. Yugyeom lets out a mirthless laugh.

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of. No matter how much you’d like to argue about it, you and I are very much the same,” he turns to Kunpimook to say, then, with a deceptively amicable smile, holds forth his glass. “Here’s to being peasants, then, among the aristocrats.”

And before Kunpimook can do anything, Yugyeom’s clinked their glasses, before downing his champagne expertly, not a drop slipping past his lips.

So he watches with a slightly annoyed, if not slightly curious, air, as Yugyeom drifts naturally away, setting his now empty flute on the tray of a passing waiter with a cursory nod, before appearing at the side of Im Jaebum with the likeness of an actor entering the stage from the wings, to be introduced, like an accessory, or an asset.

Which reminds him, thankfully.

“Kunpimook Bhuwakul,” Jackson booms over a glass of Merlot Dolomiti ’10 (his fifth glass, Kunpimook counts), just as Kunpimook conveniently materialises, pleasant smile fixed onto his face. “A junior from my Stanford days,” he laughs, as if there’s some inside joke behind that, and the rest of the men and women surrounding him follow suit. “And we know how those went.”

“Pleasure to meet you all,” Kunpimook bows, and just like that, he’s silently dismissed once more, as Jackson leads his captive audience on to another topic.

A woman with bold lips and eyes traced expertly to make her look ten years younger and about twice as sharp, strings of fake pearls tumbling over her ample cleavage like cheap beads from a little girl’s toy set, engages him in strident conversation, to try, Kunpimook realises about two and a half seconds into her first sentence, to root up possible gossip about Jackson. Her type are ridiculously easy to spot- men and women with about half the status and affluence (or less) than Jackson, who desperately throw potential contracts and benefits his way to wheedle some possibly crippling information out of him about Jackson’s personal life, as if Jackson himself hasn’t already sealed the possibility of those falling into Kunpimook’s hands.

(Or as if he actually knows anything much about Jackson’s personal life past college, anyway. The man isn’t stupid- Kunpimook’s still too much of a nobody to give such sensitive information out to.)

So as per normal, he politely twists every question she throws out with elusive answers and redirected inquiries until she leaves, slightly confused and disappointed and entirely convinced it’s on the part of the last three glasses of fine champagne she’s had.

Slightly repulsed but also rather satisfied, Kunpimook abandons his champagne on a banquet table and picks up a cocktail instead, the same one he’d seen Jackson drinking earlier, and pretends to take interest in it whilst observing the dancers onstage, blending in perfectly with the background of finery until he’s needed again.

It’s only after a while that he gives in to the increasingly familiar but no less uncomfortable gaze on the back of his head, slicing neatly through layers of hair and skin and skull to pry open his mind like diamond. But when he turns back to observe once more, Yugyeom’s holding a light conversation with a gentleman he’d been introduced to earlier by Jackson as one of Mark’s many millionaire relatives, now holding a broader-stemmed glass of whiskey carelessly.

Kunpimook angles his head to take a subtle glance, and notes with a hint of satisfaction that Jaebum is, indeed, sipping from a whiskey, as he talks with Jinyoung. But he looks back, then, and in the moment he gazes in Yugyeom’s direction, said man seems to look straight through the person he’s speaking with, right at him.

Kunpimook doesn’t miss the knowing pull to the edge of his lips, nor the way he tilts his glass with an imperceptible nod, diamond eyes flicking to the flute in Kunpimook’s hand.

A moment ago, Kunpimook would’ve fought, would’ve stuck stubbornly to whatever belief most opposed the one anyone had been trying to force upon him, but tonight, inexplicably, (an effect of the excellent drinks, perhaps?) he waltzes willingly right into the trap Yugyeom’s set out specially for him, and nods right back, tipping the glass in his hand by an almost invisible degree.

 _Touché_.

Two can play at this game, he thinks smugly. And maybe, if they manage their cards nice and proper, with just the right amount of fine complimentary champagne, both of them might happen to come out of it winners.

*

After the events of that night, though, and a week passes with no jolt to the memories that’d been fabricated, Kunpimook settles comfortably back into his life of work and social activities.

Speaking of which, now, despite the recollection of events past, to say that his life _revolves_ around Jackson and his stupidly affluent associates would be a complete lie- rich men don’t have time like that for people like him, and Kunpimook’s honestly quite relieved. Any more attention might lead to rumours, which might lead to Jackson (or Mark) having a reason to get rid of him, which most definitely is not ideal in this situation.

He lunches with his colleagues on a regular basis, drinks with them on occasion, listens in on gossip that pales in comparison to that which he’s heard at some of the parties Jackson brings him to, keeping fingers comfortably situated in as many pies as possible, switching from persona to persona to satisfy whatever crowd he’s with at the moment.

So it comes as a surprise when he discovers a text from an unknown number one evening just as he’s about to leave the office, asking most politely to meet up for dinner at a rather well-known restaurant in the central business district. The words only hit home properly when he sees the short signature at the bottom of the text, simple and meaningful as anything.

Kunpimook honestly considers standing him up for a moment. But then his curiosity gets the better of him, and he cabs down to the restaurant, stomach twisting both in anticipation and nerves.

Just as expected, as the taxi comes to an ambling stop outside the soft lights of the Mediterranean restaurant, the door opens graciously as Kunpimook’s settling the payment, and a formal, but not particularly stiff, hand, gestures for him to exit.

“Oh, thank y-…” The customary appreciation falls short from Kunpimook’s lips when he exits, and gets a proper look at the imposter of a doorman who’d been so kind. “…Yugyeom?”

The leather bag swinging off one of his broad shoulders, the velvety Dylan 60’s evening coat draped over a forearm, suggests he’s just gotten off work as well, and the pleasant smile he offers is somewhat condescending, especially to Kunpimook, in his sturdy, but by no means overly expensive, office wear.

Yugyeom seems to read his mind, like Kunpimook’s thoughts had been broadcasted in his eyes. “Jaebum-hyung wanted me to attend a lunch today,” he explains, as Kunpimook exits the cab, like he somehow knows that provides enough understanding in itself.

“Ah,” Kunpimook hopes the relief in his voice isn’t _too_ obvious- despite what he’d said that night, he’d rather liked the idea of normalcy Yugyeom had implied, like a secret, of sorts, that only the two of them shared. It’s a silly thought, something he’ll never divulge explicitly, but something tells him Yugyeom already knows. Why else would he have suggested such a thing, other than to charm Kunpimook into wanting to know more?

“I have a table reserved,” Yugyeom carries on seamlessly, calmly, and Kunpimook’s oddly led to think of a valet, or a personal assistant, rather than a man inviting him to dinner. “A lot less classy than some of what Jackson’s probably treated you to, but I’ve been told the duck moussaka here’s a killer.”

“You going to tell me why you called me out here out of the blue?” Goosebumps are prickling on his skin in the evening streets of Seoul in the cool fall weather, but he refrains from following Yugyeom in straight away. “I feel like I’m about to be snatched off the street.”

Yugyeom laughs, but it doesn’t last long, like nothing much had been very funny about that statement (like he doesn’t think the idea of being snatched off the street is very ludicrous at all), and he bows slightly in shame.

“Sorry, that was rude,” Yugyeom confesses. “I wanted to get to know you, that’s all. Like Jaebum-hyung said,” he offers a pleasant and eerily blank smile. “We have a lot in common. It would do for people like us to stick together.”

“Peasants among aristocracy, and all?” Kunpimook asks innocently, and Yugyeom laughs again, this time with a more relaxed smile.

“Exactly,” he takes a step towards the restaurant. “Convinced yet?”

“Perfectly,” Kunpimook says, pinning him with a sarcastic glance as he follows. “I know what you’re doing, you know.”

“You do, now,” Yugyeom says, as if talking about the weather, or a news report about new café outlets opening in Seoul. “Indulge me.”

“Jaebum-ssi sent you, didn’t he?” Kunpimook honestly doesn’t care if he sounds blunt- he has to find out if this is a waste of time, or if it’s really the wondrous game Yugyeom’s made it out to be. “You’re going to be disappointed- I don’t know anything more incriminating about Jackson’s business methods than you do.”

Yugyeom laughs, as expected, but the words that follow satisfy Kunpimook’s questions.

“Trust me,” he says, almost lazily. “Jaebum-hyung already knows more about Jackson’s business than both of us ever will combined. Now if you’ll let us go in? I’m starving here, if you aren’t.”

Kunpimook finally obliges, sated smile on his face as he follows Yugyeom in. It’d be a lie to say he isn’t at least a little interested in what Yugyeom has to say, or a little enamoured by this covert meeting of their own accord, no multimillionaire relatives or friends occupying them. He has a feeling this will be the first real conversation he ever has with Kim Yugyeom, and the events that follow don’t disappoint him.

Yugyeom behaves like a man who’d been brought up with a silver spoon in his mouth in almost every aspect. He converses with the waiter in English, in that same voice that seems to tread, soft and steady, and constantly ensures Kunpimook’s at his side, and even manages to pull off ridiculously cheesy things like holding open doors and pulling out chairs without breaking a sweat. But in the same way, the way he moves, flowing _around_ Kunpimook, rather than before or beside him, reminds Kunpimook that he hadn’t been taught these skills to serve himself, but to serve others.

“So,” Yugyeom says, once they’ve made their orders, and the waiter has glided away silently with the menus. “Kunpimook Bhuwakul, right?”

Kunpimook opens his mouth to correct the pronunciation, then stops when he realises Yugyeom has said it perfectly.

“Not bad,” he says, impressed. “It usually takes people loads of tries before they get it right.”

“Oh, I’m sure,” Yugyeom chuckles, like there’s nothing to it. “ _Bambam_ work better for you, then?”

Kunpimook winces. “Jackson gave me that name, after he got tired of calling me properly back in college. But yeah, I guess it does.”

Yugyeom’s eyes glint, and Kunpimook feels like he’s just stepped into another of Yugyeom’s carefully laid traps.

“Jackson,” he says with a voice Kunpimook knows well. It’s a voice of innocent curiosity, designed to rid the listener of all doubts they might have about the integrity of his character, designed to carefully conceal any possible disdain or mirth. “How’d you meet him, exactly? From what I heard of Jackson-hyung’s, ah, _speech_ that day, you were friends in Stanford?”

“Friends,” Kunpimook ascertains with a polite smile. “Close friends, just like you’re Jaebum-hyung’s, ah, _close cousin._ ”

Yugyeom smiles, like he finds something particularly funny. “What he said about our parents being close,” he chuckles dryly. “Total bullshit. His dad hates my mom,” Kunpimook’s a little shocked at this revelation- he’d expected a night of lies, calculated and clever dishonesty, and hidden meanings. Hearing Yugyeom so _honest_ is a little new. Not particularly _unpleasant_ , per se, just…a little unexpected. “She owes him a lot of money,” he folds his hands neatly on the table, a cheerfully empty smile tugging at the edge of his lips. “I think it’s his idea of revenge, letting her know her son’s always going to be under the thumb of his cousin.”

“Ah,” Kunpimook fumbles with his words for a moment, unprepared to respond, but Yugyeom sweeps right on, saving him the trouble of finding something appropriate to say.

“So, _Stanford_ ,” Yugyeom raises an eyebrow, prompting further explanation. Kunpimook quails a little, knowing he’s been cornered, now.

“We took the same major,” he says, though there’s more of a mumble in his voice now than anything. “I didn’t see much of him after he left, then he popped in with an open window in his company for an accountant, so you know,” he shrugs. “I got lucky?”

Yugyeom doesn’t believe a word he’s saying, Kunpimook’s sure, but to his surprise and relief, he doesn’t pursue the matter, instead progressing smoothly onto the weather and current affairs. The conversation’s comfortably civil after that- back to the safety of polite lies and hidden meanings, things that Kunpimook can handle.

“The moussaka _is_ great,” he notes, once the food arrives and he takes a hesitant bite. “Sad it’s so ugly, though.”

“But then I’m sure you’ve tasted better,” Yugyeom says, inspecting the hummus with great interest, before ladling an experimental half-spoonful onto his plate. “You have to try the hummus too, I have a couple friends who swear on it.”

“You’d be surprised,” Kunpimook mutters, prodding the hummus with the serving spoon. “Jackson has the weirdest tastes. I think I’ve been forced to eat more pig liver in two months than my entire life.”

Yugyeom laughs. “At least you don’t third wheel at almost every dinner,” he says pleasantly, tasting the hummus. “Wow, this _is_ nice.”

“Third wheel?” Kunpimook wonders if he’s heard right, more focused on spooning the hummus over without any of it falling onto the table. Sure, he’s _aware_ , per se, of the relationship between Jaebum and Jinyoung, chattered languidly about as part of the usual lunchtime gossip his colleagues indulge in from time to time, but he’d never connected that issue to Yugyeom. Somehow the two were separate, grossly different things, and for a moment, he wonders why. But then Yugyeom moves on, and he forgets.

“Jackson doesn’t drag you along on all his private parties, does he?” Yugyeom dabs his fingers on a napkin dismissively. “Hyung has a penchant for showing Jinyoung off wherever he goes, and somehow, I’m instrumental to that, apparently.”

“Doesn’t Jinyoung-hyung have something against that?” Kunpimook laughs. It’s funny, hearing it like this. He’s sure in a book, or a drama of some sort, the juxtaposition of covert romance underneath corporate war might be some popular and overused trope, but hearing it in action from a silent observer is slightly ridiculous. “He runs the HR department in some other big shot company, doesn’t he? Isn’t it, I don’t know, a little undignified?”

“AQ Corporation,” Yugyeom informs. “Eat it with the focaccia, it’s great-…AQ’s a subsidiary company to JYP Industries. People used to gossip Jinyoung had done it to get one up on the corporate ladder, you know, being the big boss’s favourite and everything, but then one day those people just conveniently disappeared,” he shrugs, like people vanishing off the face of this earth happens every day. “Everyone thinks it’s Jaebum-hyung that got rid of them, but if you’ve known Jinyoung-hyung long enough, you’ll know-…watch out for the sauce, it’s really runny-…you’ll know it’s him you have to look out for.”

Kunpimook presses the napkin to his lips in distaste. “Well that’s great to know, I’m surrounded by dangerous people capable of ridding my existence from this earth, that’s nice.”

“It is once you learn how to deal with them,” Yugyeom dips something that looks a lot like a glorified nacho chip into the hummus. “Keep your hands clean, fists up, all that. But you already knew that, didn’t you?”

Kunpimook laughs into his moussaka. “Not really. It’s difficult, finding people who know about this kind of stuff, who are willing to share what they know. _I_ wouldn’t know how to handle someone like him,” he bites his lip for a moment in a flash of disappointment, before it’s over, and he covers it up with an artificial smile. “I’ll bet it’s really complex.”

Yugyeom fixes him with a thoughtful smile, food going unnoticed for the first time during that meal.

“I’ve forgotten what that feels like.”

“What feels like?” Kunpimook feigns innocence, though his stomach jolts with anticipation. Now this, _this_ , is a real challenge. Yugyeom smiles.

“It’d be pointless for you to try to get me to tell you any tricks of the trade,” he continues, like Kunpimook had explicitly tried to force it out of him. “It’s different for every person. I’m sure you knew that, too.”

“I did,” Kunpimook admits. Truth be told, he hadn’t expected Yugyeom to see through that one. “Still, wouldn’t hurt to try, though.”

The conversation, after that, slips back into normal things, work, this time, and Kunpimook’s beginning to enjoy it, this game of continuously sliding in and out of anonymity, light-footed and en garde in anticipation to see who dares to toe the line of wretched honesty further. It’s only when they’re picking their way through a dessert of poached cherries with whipped cream and pear parfaits that Yugyeom poses a question which throws Kunpimook off a little.

“What do you think makes one indispensable to a rich man?” he says, out of nowhere. Kunpimook thinks about it, he does, for a while. It’s not like it isn’t a question he’s asked himself more than a few times already- he just hasn’t found the right way to phrase it to anyone else, and certainly not someone as smart as Kim Yugyeom.

“Denial?” he tries after a moment, cutting through a fine layer of pear jelly with a silver dessert fork. The smile that follows on Yugyeom’s face has a hint of bliss on it, as he spoons a cherry between his lips in contemplation.

“Best answer I’ve heard all my life,” he concludes with a congratulatory smile after a good minute of thought, and though Kunpimook would immediately associate an answer like that with a derogatory tone, there’s something in it that resonates, clear and sincere, that convinces him Yugyeom is telling the truth.

(Or maybe he’s just a better liar than Kunpimook is.)

Yugyeom picks up the tab later. Kunpimook makes to insist he pay his own share, until Yugyeom slices through his protests cleanly, sliding a glossy credit card with an assuring smile to the waiter.

“Weird, isn’t it?” Yugyeom takes a final sip of his coffee.

“Paying for your own fancy meals? Absolutely,” Kunpimook wants to come up with some cutting comment, but he feels he’s served Yugyeom his fair share of lies for the night. “I still think you should’ve let me pay my share, we don’t exactly have three earlier generations’ worth of money to squander, you know.”

“Oh, that’s easy,” Yugyeom waves generally. “You’ll just pay next time.”

Kunpimook narrows his eyes, though his lips curve in interest. “And who says there’ll be a next time?”

Yugyeom chuckles. “You will. Eventually,” he leans forward, playful smile abroad. “I like Italian. Just something to note.”

Kunpimook scoffs. “You’re too much. It’s hard to believe you’re the same guy I met at the restaurant that day. You train yourself to be that obedient, or did Jaebum-hyung do it for you?”

Apparently that hits a nerve, because Yugyeom bristles, a cold shadow falling between them for just a moment, before he clears it up with an indifferent laugh.

“Another reason for us to meet again,” he says, finger pads dragging loosely along the tablecloth. “You’ll find out.”

“I sure look forward to it,” Kunpimook replies, voice soft with a cheeky, shameless sort of curiosity, as he rises in tandem with Yugyeom to leave. “And by the way,” he adds, catching Yugyeom in mid-stride, adding a wry smile. “I like Thai. _Just a note_.”

*

The night is counterproductive, in many ways, he concludes as he’s lying down to go to bed, because all it’s shown him is how much he doesn’t know about Yugyeom, and how badly it might all implicate him in the future. It’s sad, really, when he decides that the best case scenario for the two of them at this stage would be to never see each other again.

Kunpimook’s spent a lifetime avoiding clever men and women in the fear that they might be cleverer than him, but tonight had been the first of what he realises he hopes to be many- and he realises in part annoyance, part admiration, that Yugyeom’s got him: hook, line and sinker. Because now he’s fallen into the splendid trap of killer curiosity about a man who most definitely has the wit and means to end him.

(So he just has to make sure Yugyeom knows that works both ways.)

Worst case scenario? Kunpimook muses. It’d be that Yugyeom does eventually find a way to absorb his secrets and get rid of him, to re-establish monopoly over the strange circle of four powerful men once more, while Kunpimook rots in some gutter or worse, is forced to return home to Thailand.

So what about middle ground?

Kunpimook lets himself smile at the darkened ceiling for the first time that night. Middle ground would be that they so happen to fall in love and decide to set about conquering the world together.

And to be honest, middle ground honestly doesn’t sound all that bad now.  
  
  
  



	2. Chapter 2

“You’re exaggerating.”

Kunpimook flips open his wallet as he passes the security guard in the foyer, the access card Jackson had given him glinting just obviously enough for the man to let him pass without so much as a second glance. He scowls at nothing in particular as he presses the silvery button to go up, the metal surface cool under his fingers.

Yugyeom had, to Kunpimook’s annoyance and relief, been right- that night together had been far from their last. After that night, they’d met for dinners, crossed the business district to have lunch together, and with every meeting it seemed that they had more and more to speak about. It manages to both scare and excite Kunpimook, finally meeting an intellectual on the same wavelength, saying something and having someone understand immediately exactly what he’s talking about.

They’d spoken about the usual things at first, joking about harmlessly embarrassing secrets their respective bosses would honestly rather not have the world know, complaining about colleagues and superiors, but then things had escalated, of sorts- Kunpimook finds themselves talking about questions that’d been nagging at him since he’d been too young to remember, conflicts that other people would otherwise just leave alone and let be. He leaves every meeting drowning in thought, a little more relaxed and a little happier, though he’d never admit it.

There’s an attraction he undeniably feels at the thought of Yugyeom, a sort of anticipation and hope that’s laced with fear, that grows stronger exponentially with every time they meet, and though he passes it off as the side effects of finally meeting someone who understands him, it’s increasingly hard to ignore the way he feels around the younger man.

But these are things he chooses not to think about, things he’s beaten down so far in himself he wonders if he can even recognise them anymore, because with people like them one slip-up, one blind spot, could send him tumbling down into an abyss. So he zips his heart shut and purses his lips, focusing on the much more important matter at hand.

“I think _you’re_ being too liberal,” he decides to argue back, his words followed by the tinny sound of Yugyeom’s laughter over the phone. “And _I’m_ the foreigner here. Who even likes tripe anyway?”

“Uh, I don’t know, maybe about eighty percent of the local population,” it’s amazing, how much sarcasm a phone line can convey (or maybe that’s just Yugyeom). Kunpimook glares at the ridiculously extravagant chandelier hanging from the foyer ceiling, casting annoyingly brilliant rays of light everywhere like a girl tossing flowers as she skips down a street. “Face it, you’re just weird.”

“I’d like to see _you_ come to Thailand,” the older man threatens. “I’ll force feed you tom yum and _phat ki mao_ noodles.”

“Scary,” Yugyeom says drily, and Kunpimook scoffs as he gets in the lift, tapping his wallet against the smooth black scanning panel above the buttons, before the lights beside the buttons to the top levels light up as he gains clearance. He presses the top one, barely having to look at it with the number of times he’s done so. “I suppose I should be afraid.”

“You should be,” Kunpimook shoots back. “Very afraid.”

“We’re talking about the idea of you feeding me, right?”

Kunpimook swears in Thai. It bounces around the sides of the empty elevator, and Yugyeom laughs again, longer this time.

“ _I_ get to choose where we go next time,” the Thai native grumbles, as the lift ascends silently, numbers blinking by on the LED display at an impressive speed, albeit one he’s already used to. “I’ve had my fair share of weird food here.”

“Alright, whatever you say,” he can almost see the younger man raising his hands in mock surrender, the beginnings of a snide grin on his face. “Let the foreigner choose the food.”

“Well the foreigner obviously has to do so when the local keeps bringing him to eat _cow stomachs._ ”

“That was _one time_ , and I’ll have you know _makchang_ is a delicacy here.”

“It’s a _cow stomach_.”

“You eat _flower buds_.”

“ _Kaeng dok salae_ is a _-…_ ” Kunpimook begins indignantly, but Yugyeom cuts him off with a low cuss and a muttered _call you back_ , before promptly hanging up. The older man swells a little, preparing his crushing comeback when Yugyeom does call back, and heads out the elevator the moment the doors open.

He’s painfully reminded of the fact that light nearly blinds him every single time he steps out of this elevator (probably on purpose). The top floor of Wang Corporation’s HQ building simply reeks of grandeur, not in a particularly bad way (especially when you know part of this grandeur might just go to you) but it’s enough to make Kunpimook want to stare every time he comes over. His shoes are silent against the deep carpet as he walks through the corridor, sunlight pouring in through the glass pane walls illuminating the place with a concise and calculated beauty.

Jackson had had Parisian and English architects come over to redesign the place a little after taking over most of the reins from his father, and now the place looks stylish, the cream of the crop when it comes to modern interior design, everything both prettily tasteful and purposefully minimalistic. Even the people.

(Especially the people.)

He rounds the corner, running through Jackson’s text in his mind to meet outside his office torun through one of the showrooms before they’re launched, before halting dead in his tracks.

His phone buzzes, and he picks up, deflating a little in weary annoyance.

“Sorry, Jaebum-hyung was calling, wanted me to-…why? Hey, is something up?”

Kunpimook casts a distasteful glance at the noticeably empty seat at the table in front of Jackson’s office, placard embossed with _Choi Youngjae, Secretary_ neatly set out in front of the computer, currently switched off, and glances at his watch impatiently. He looks reluctantly in the direction of the office, wincing when it’s proven just how useless these apparently soundproof doors are.

“No, Jackson just told me to see him, and now he’s-…” he rolls his eyes. “Busy.”

“Busy?” Yugyeom echoes. “But if he told you to see him it should be alright then, right?”

“ _Busy_ ,” Kunpimook stresses, doing an about turn and decisively walking away from potentially permanent eye damage. He’s had enough of it to last him a lifetime, if he’s to be honest.

“Ah,” Yugyeom understands surprisingly fast. But then again, considering Jaebum’s relationship with Jinyoung, it shouldn’t be very surprising at all.

“ _Shit_ , and I just wasted half my lunch hour, too,” Kunpimook mutters, reminding himself to fire off a text to Jackson as soon as possible (which will probably go ignored, at least for the next twenty minutes or so). “I wish he’d stop getting horny at such inconvenient times, he’s got the whole _day_ , why _when I’m supposed to see him-…_ ”

“You should just go in,” Yugyeom remarks. “Show him he can’t be so irresponsible.”

“Please,” Kunpimook says shortly. “I have, many times, let me assure you. And I bet Jaebum doesn’t tell Jinyoung to keep blowing him under the deskwhen you’re _right there_.”

“Ooh,” Yugyeom inhales a sharp intake of breath. “I guess it’s a foreigner thing.”

“ _Stop_ playing that card,” Kunpimook snaps irritably as he gets into the elevator, thinking about the extensive range of cafeterias in the complex and which ones he might be able to grab a quick bite from. “You’re just pissy about the cow stomachs.”

“Are you _ever_ going to let that go.”

“No,” the older man grumbles. “You’d better have some really great meat barbeque buffet planned for tonight, because it doesn’t look like I’m going to get any lunch.”

Yugyeom laughs, breathy and amused. “I have a couple of places in mind.”

Kunpimook punches the button to go to the ground floor moodily, stomach growling, and slumps against the walls of the elevator, rubbing his eyes wearily.

“Could you choose the one furthest from the business district?” he mutters. “I need to get out of this place.”

The younger man’s voice is gentler when he replies, not in the way that suggests pity, but rather, a kindred spirit. “Sure. There’s a family diner about twenty minutes by cab from here. They have cute puppies that run around your feet when you eat.”

“Puppies sound good,” Kunpimook says weakly, as he exits the elevator, before walking out of the building towards the café, for a cup of coffee, at least. “Seven-thirty?”

“On,” Yugyeom replies, and for a moment there, Kunpimook wishes he could see the smile on the other man’s face as well as he could hear it then.

*

“We should do something normal,” Yugyeom’s voice is tinny over the phone but by no means any less exciting. Kunpimook leans back in the office swivel chair, twirling a pen in contemplation. Yugyeom doesn’t often call during office hours, but he’d assured him that his supervisor wouldn’t complain when Kunpimook had expressed his concerns. Being Jaebum’s _close cousin_ gave him a lot of benefits around the company, apparently.

“Define _normal_.”

“You know,” Yugyeom sounds like he’s shrugging, though Kunpimook knows he’s being anything but complacent. “Normal stuff. Go watch a movie. Walk in a park. Not dress like we’re going to a funeral.”

“For the dressing part, that’s really just _you_ , okay, _I_ happen to have this thing called _style_ ,” Kunpimook preens, turning for a moment to check his reflection in the little mirror he props on top of his logbooks.

“You could give me lessons, then,” Kunpimook can hear the grin in Yugyeom’s voice. “But you haven’t answered my question.”

“Normal stuff,” Kunpimook echoes, tapping in a couple of experimental numbers into his spreadsheet and making a face when they don’t tally. “I don’t mind.”

“Saturday afternoon, movie?”

Kunpimook squints a little at the computer screen. “You planned this, didn’t you?”

“Maybe.”

“ _Annoying_ ,” Kunpimook grins. “And you’re on. Need any help picking what to wear, you big baby?”

*

 _Movie_ ends up, ironically, being the most ridiculous romcom Kunpimook’s ever seen, which he’s sure had probably brought his IQ down a few digits, but they both enjoy it, nevertheless. It’s nice, seeing such stupid people for once, after months of being on their toes around fatally capable men and women.

Kunpimook meets Yugyeom near the entrance of the cinema and vividly remembers thinking he looks like an elaborately crafted piece of background. A very attractive, elaborately crafted piece of background. His dark hair had fallen, loose and soft, into his eyes as he observed the movie timings, and Kunpimook had resisted the urge to reach up (for Yugyeom stood almost half a head taller than him, especially now that Kunpimook had ditched the insoles) and run a hand through it to determine just how nice it might feel.

Yugyeom blends in perfectly with the movie crowd, not an accessory or a word out of place, and Kunpimook feels a little awkward next to him, though he’d taken the time to think over his outfit carefully that morning, a soft fitted turtleneck in a light wooden brown and dark jeans. But then-…

“They say bronze suits a really specific number of complexions and skin tones,” Yugyeom says out of nowhere as he’s ordering the tickets, not bothering to listen when Kunpimook insists that he’ll pay this time, merely saying he’ll have loads of future opportunities to foot the bill.

(And Kunpimook learns much later, through countless bouts of trial and error, that in the mess of riddles Yugyeom somehow manages to pass off as his vocabulary, Yugyeom had just said he looked nice.)

So here they are now, shoulder to shoulder on a freezing park bench, idly eating ice creams (don’t question the logic, accept it), watching the world fly by in a whirl that’s both a little sad and a little funny.

“How well do you think that movie will be received?” Yugyeom prods at the peppermint chocolate chip ice cream thoughtlessly, and Kunpimook watches him dab away a viscous drop that hangs over the edge of the plastic cup, previously threatening to fall.

“Don’t know. People love the whole idea of cathartic romance, but if you ask me, that was a little _too_ explicit,” Kunpimook shrugs. “No one likes an ending as closed as that.”

“No room for imagination,” Yugyeom supplies helpfully, and Kunpimook nods, ever on the same wavelength. “But it might surprise you that people nowadays don’t have a lot of that.”

“True,” Kunpimook acknowledges thoughtfully. Then, “maybe it’ll be a box office hit after all.”

Yugyeom makes a face. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here.”

“ _You_ were the one who said-…” Kunpimook starts to laugh, elbowing Yugyeom in the ribs, and their ice creams wobble dangerously.

“It’s starting to get cold,” Yugyeom says suddenly. “What time is it?”

“Almost six,” Kunpimook wrinkles his nose, pushing his sleeve aside to check his watch. “That movie took long.”

Yugyeom cranes his neck to look over their shoulders. “You know, I don’t live too far from here,” he says, turning back with a boyish smile. “I don’t suppose you’d like to come back for dinner?”

And Kunpimook lowers his ice cream, regarding Yugyeom with a Very Suspicious look. “Just how much of this did you plan exactly?”

Yugyeom blinks innocently. “I think I happen to have just enough at my apartment to make something substantial for two- by coincidence, of course. I hear you like Thai cuisine.”

Kunpimook’s smile is a little annoyed, but mostly flattered.

*

Yugyeom’s studio apartment isn’t quite what Kunpimook had expected, in the nice sort of way. It’s contemporary, for sure, polished and neat, but there’s something about the airiness of the place, the windows that open into a gorgeous view and bright, white walls, that make him feel calmer.

Kunpimook wanders while Yugyeom putters around the compact kitchenette, observing the mantelpiece above the glossy LED television and its many tiny figures and mementos, like a teaser to Yugyeom’s life beyond what he knows of the man now.

To his disappointment, there aren’t any pictures of his youth, no junior trophies and certificates though, like all evidence pointing to the fact that Yugyeom existed before he turned twenty-one had been systematically eradicated from this household. He wonders if Yugyeom had done it on purpose, before deciding that it isn’t his place to ask.

(A while ago, he wouldn’t have cared. He wonders too, what’s happened in the short span of time to make him change his mind.)

The smell of something familiar (in a nostalgic sort of way) wafts out the kitchen, just as Kunpimook rounds the edge of the coffee table, and he’s about to go in and ask if he can help in any way when he spots a book, hard backed and a little worn, tucked under one of the cushions on the plush leather sofa.

It’s _The Great Gatsby_ , and it surprises Kunpimook that this version hasn’t been translated into Korean. Sure, that one experience at the restaurant had enlightened him to the fact that Yugyeom could, in fact, speak English, but confirming a reservation was one thing, and appreciating classic literature was another entirely.

“You know, I think this dish would be a lot more credible if you helped,” Yugyeom appears at the doorway to the kitchenette, sleeves rolled to his elbows, and notes the book in Kunpimook’s hands in partial surprise. “Oh, I didn’t realise…” he takes a rather puzzled look into the bedroom. “Hadn’t realised I left this out here.”

“I’m sure you’re doing fine,” Kunpimook replies absently, sinking into the couch to flip through the book leisurely. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Yugyeom make as if to walk over (to protest, perhaps?) but he eventually decides against it, heading back into the kitchen with that same indifferent air he always carries about him.

Kunpimook’s not big on reading, per se, but _The Great Gatsby_ had been a classic, of sorts, even back in Thailand. Personally, it’d been one of the literary challenges he’d undertaken as a boy, when he’d been hell bent on getting out of the country in search of a better life if it killed him. Looking back now, it’s like a quiet notch in his belt, and in that sense the book holds a bitter sort of satisfaction for him.

He stops flipping when he gets back to the start of the book, and notes, for the first time, highlighting, that had been done in fading, but nevertheless rather neat, indigo. He frowns, reading through the line in question briefly.

_In consequence I’m inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores._

Something makes him smile- he’d liked that line too. But then he reads on, and bit by bit, something seems to open up to him, something hidden between the lines, like they’re written in invisible ink, in the careful script of a man with eyes that could see through the world and out the other side.

_-and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men-_

_-for the intimate revelations of young men or at least the terms in which they express them are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions-_

He flips on, scanning briefly through other quotes of roughly the same meaning, until he stops, because the highlighting’s changed. It’s in lilac, now, and the ink is fresh, like the lines had just been marked out recently.

_Again a sort of apology arose to my lips. Almost any exhibition of complete self sufficiency draws a stunned tribute from me._

It’s an observation, he remembers, that Carraway had made about Baker, Daisy’s friend, in explanation of his out of the ordinary first impression of the woman. And the more Kunpimook flips on, the more lines in lilac he sees, scattered amongst those older ones in blue, almost reverently done, even, so as not to smudge it. First in faded pink:

_At the enchanted metropolitan twilight I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others-_

Then in lilac:

_-then it was something more. I wasn’t actually in love, but I felt a sort of tender curiosity. The bored haughty face that she turned to the world concealed something—most affectations conceal something eventually, even though they don’t in the beginning—_

There’s a blot at the end of the highlighting, here, like the pen had lingered on the surface of the paper for too long as the reader contemplated if he should highlight the next line. Instead, he’d bracketed it in pencil, soft against the worn pages of the book.

_(and one day I found what it was.)_

“If I kill us both later, you’re taking responsibility,” Yugyeom calls out, and Kunpimook reluctantly puts down the book, walking into the kitchen grumpily.

“Alright, step aside,” he nudges Yugyeom away from the saucepan, and the man moves aside obligingly. It’s a testament to how good he is at their job that he fades into the background so quickly Kunpimook almost doesn’t notice him leaving kitchen later, under the pretence of setting the table.

So, as expected, when he exits the kitchen again after the food’s done, the book is gone, and all traces it had ever existed on the sofa erased.

(The food hadn’t even been in trouble when he’d come in.)

 


	3. symmetrophobic

 

  
“It’s all just getting either really bad or really good, and really fast,” Jaebum’s voice shakes Kunpimook out of his reverie, and he takes a hesitant bite out of his food to cover up for it. It’s the third time he’s having lunch with all five of them (Yugyeom included) and somehow, the prior experience makes him no less nervous.

“Yes, but the market in Asia’s going to shit, and that’s where we’ve got a lot of resources holed up-…” Jackson sounds a little annoyed, food barely touched.

“Those stocks should’ve gone to the Middle East when you had the chance,” Jinyoung remarks, then, wryly, and Mark cuts in before Jackson can reply.

“No point talking about it now,” he says deftly, because Jackson’s looking increasingly irritated by the second. “Besides, a majority of those are concentrated in Singapore and Hong Kong, and their currency hasn’t failed us yet. Don’t be so pessimistic.”

He sneaks a look at Yugyeom across the table, on Jaebum’s left, who’s apparently unaffected by the happenings, chewing indifferently on his steak, and wonders if Jaebum and Jinyoung are like this all the time.

“Bambam,” Jinyoung says all of a sudden from his left, voice softer and mellower than it’d been just moments before, and Kunpimook jumps a little. Over their private conversation, Jaebum continues to boom suggestions out at Mark and Jackson. “How’s work been? I feel awful, sometimes, that you’re left out of these important conversations all the time. I’d been hoping you’d get along better with Yugyeom, you know.”

_Oh, they’d be surprised at how well we’re “getting along”._

“Oh, work’s fine,” he supplies a smile. “Just got promoted last week, actually, I’ve never been happier-…”

“But I’m sure you must be so _tired_ from all that slave labour,” Jinyoung coos, apparently not interested in _how’s work been_. “Why don’t you come for one of our parties this weekend? Jaebum’s holding a little gathering- just, you know, celebrating anniversaries and all, and it’d be so lovely to have you along.”

“I’d love to,” Kunpimook’s feeling a little odd, honestly- they usually invite him through Jackson. He wonders why Jinyoung’s being so _personal_ , all of a sudden, and apparently Yugyeom notices it too, because when Kunpimook looks back, he’s fixing his food with an imperceptible frown, lips set in a thin line across his face.

“That’s great,” Jinyoung says, eyes crinkling into a rather dazzling smile, slender fingers curling around Kunpimook’s narrow wrist like ivy. “You have to come, really, Jackson will be there, of course, and Yugyeom too-…”

“You say that like I’ve already agreed,” Jackson scowls over, then, and Kunpimook doesn’t miss the way Mark nudges him in the thigh subtly, expression unchanging.

“Oh, don’t be such a spoilsport, Jackson,” Jinyoung says, a little impatiently, then. “Look, even Bambam’s already agreed to come-…”

“You did?” Jackson raises a dubious eyebrow in Kunpimook’s direction, and for a moment he’s taken aback, caught between the intense stares of the two men on either side of him, and a sweat breaks on his forehead, mind fumbling for words to say.

“I-…I didn’t-…”

“Then again,” a smooth voice cuts through Kunpimook’s stutters, and all eyes turn to Yugyeom at once. “Bambam here wasn’t privy to the fact you hadn’t already agreed to come, Jackson-hyung.”

Jackson seems to seethe silently for a moment, then, but simmers down rather quickly, shrugging to save face. “Alright, fine, I’ll go.”

Jaebum and Mark are now engaged in an obscure conversation and Jackson seems intent on returning to his food without second thought. Kunpimook’s eyes dart to Yugyeom’s in a momentary silent burst of thanks, but then Yugyeom’s looking down at his food, a warning sign, and he feels another pair of eyes on the side of his face.

“Tell me,” and Kunpimook’s reminded of that quality he’d been enlightened to about Jinyoung’s voice the first time he’d heard him laugh, the way it sounds clear and jagged at the same time, like there’d once been crystal in the way he spoke, but it’d long been reduced to worthless, deadly shards of glass. He looks into the man’s eyes, glinting like razors in the redundant, flickering candlelight, and nods, trying hard not to swallow in apprehension. “Did you ever meet up with Yugyeommie after that night? On your own?”

Kunpimook’s breath catches in his chest. “We bump into each other, on occasion,” he says, with a tight smile.

Jinyoung leans away, then, smiling brightly to reveal a set of perfect, white teeth. “That’s wonderful.”

It’s not, actually. JYP Industries and the Wang Corporation are on opposite ends of the central business district.

“I hope so?” Kunpimook adds an upward inflection to his last word to seem unsure, though he’s well and truly uncomfortable at this point. “I’d love to know more about him.”

“You hear that, Yugyeommie?” Jinyoung calls over the table, and Yugyeom responds accordingly, with a mildly raised brow. “You and Bambam would make the perfect pair, I’m sure. Just wait till the party this weekend,” he clasps his hands together, fingertips, manicured to a professional sheen, seemingly glowing softly. “You’ll be stuck like glue, affirmative.”

“Stop that, Jinyoungie, you’re making them uncomfortable,” Jaebum, apparently done with his conversation with Mark, joins in bluntly, and Jinyoung pouts in response.

Kunpimook doesn’t tune in to whatever Jinyoung has to say to appease his more powerful partner, instead returning to his food, not daring to make any further eye contact with Yugyeom. They’d long established the possibly disastrous results of either Jaebum or Jackson discovering their more-than-acquainted relationship- too much bad blood exists between the two business heads for anything like this to end well.

Apparently, Yugyeom seems to think the same way, because not a single comment is exchanged between them for the rest of the night.

*

However, things cool down almost too quickly after that. Kunpimook pesters Yugyeom with worried texts but it seems like Jinyoung’s forgotten completely about that night, because he’s going about everything as per normal. Maybe it’s them, maybe _they’re_ the ones being too incessantly worried, but then again, with people like Jaebum’s crowd, you can never tell.

But somehow Kunpimook feels brave enough to chance another visit to Yugyeom’s apartment, this time after work, on the Friday before the party. It’s the same delusion of invincibility that’d driven him to pick up this relationship in the first place, after all, and it drives him to this day. Especially, he notes, where Yugyeom is concerned.

Kunpimook sprawls out on the comfortably deep bed once he hears the shower start, fingers absently delving beneath a soft, plumped pillow to pull out a certain book, a book Yugyeom had apparently taken pains to hide from him the previous time he’d come here.

They’d had a short dinner, mostly punctuated by Yugyeom’s grievances on how Kunpimook was going to kill them both like this, and Kunpimook’s hand had _accidentally_ swept across the table in his defence, tipping a cup of sweetened tea over the table onto Yugyeom’s shirt.

So now, at perfect liberty to do so, he props himself neatly on Yugyeom’s bed, prying open the curiously elusive book and its secrets, apparently valuable enough that Yugyeom would want to hide it.

_-Jordan Baker instinctively avoided clever shrewd men and now I saw that this was because she felt safer on a plane where any divergence from a code would be thought impossible-_

Kunpimook reads on impatiently, following the lilac lines with interest.

_-She was incurably dishonest. She wasn’t able to endure being at a disadvantage, and given this unwillingness I suppose she had begun dealing in subterfuges when she was very young in order to keep that cool, insolent smile turned to the world-_

He flips on, seeing more lines pass by in the older, faded indigo highlighting that he barely manages to glimpse in his haste.

_-I am slow-thinking and full of interior rules that act as brakes on my desires...-_

_-_ _I was within and without. Simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life-_

One by one they seem to blow the covers off another facet to Yugyeom’s heart and mind, and slowly Kunpimook starts to arrange the pieces in a delicate order, painstakingly rediscovering something he’d thought he knew so well.

_-It's a great advantage not to drink among hard-drinking people. You can hold your tongue, and, moreover, you can time any little irregularity of your own so that everybody else is so blind that they don't see or care.-_

The shower door opens, and Kunpimook flips just a bit more, one last desperate spurt in the hungry pursuit of understanding, and he catches one last quote. Somehow, then, something tells him it’s the _first_ thing that’d been highlighted in this book- perhaps something about the unevenness to the lines, the hesitance with which it had been done, gives it away. Either way, it intrigues him to the point of recklessness.

_I tried to go then, but they wouldn’t hear of it; perhaps my presence made them feel more satisfactorily alone._

“Unbelievable,” Yugyeom comments dryly, and Kunpimook looks up, conspicuously sliding the book back under Yugyeom’s pillow with his most charming smile. He props his chin up with his free hand in the meantime, blinking prettily up at Yugyeom.

“Do I look out of place here?” he asks with a cheeky smile, but then his breath betrays him, hitching a little as Yugyeom draws too close a little too quickly, but then leaning away again, this time with the book in his hand. He rubs a towel into his hair with the other, sending a derisive smile in Kunpimook’s direction.

“And you said _I_ plotted,” he mutters, setting the book on a shelf, before tossing the towel onto the back of his desk chair and walking back over to the bed, settling onto the soft duvet with a soft _whoosh_ sound. “How you’ve managed to survive till now, I’ll never understand.”

“I happen to have excellent friends in higher places,” Kunpimook rolls automatically into Yugyeom’s lap, satisfied when the younger man tenses a little at the action. “You might’ve heard of them.”

“I’m sure,” Yugyeom settles a cautious hand on the side of Kunpimook’s face, cool fingers tracing delightful patterns along his cheek. “Just _why_ ,” he says, with a disdain that doesn’t invoke guilt in the slightest, “are you so interested in that book?”

“It’s precisely _because_ you don’t want me near it,” Kunpimook snaps his fingers. “I figure you’ve got something big to hide.”

Yugyeom laughs. “Everyone’s got things to hide. Mine just aren’t as interesting as theirs.”

“I object,” Kunpimook pillows his head comfortably on Yugyeom’s thigh. The folds of his slim dress shirt are pressing uncomfortably into his skin, a contrast to the t-shirt and shorts Yugyeom had thrown on after his shower, and for a moment he envies him. “I think you’ve got everything in the world to hide.”

“Why’s that?” Yugyeom shifts Kunpimook’s head, nudging him with his knee, and Kunpimook moves over obligingly, till they’re sitting cross-legged on the bed, knees touching. “I don’t think I’m a very remarkable person.”

“You don’t have to be remarkable to have someone be interested in you,” Kunpimook argues, and Yugyeom lets out a low chuckle.

“Is that so?”

“I’m hurt you’d think otherwise,” Kunpimook chooses to sprawl into Yugyeom’s pillow, then, ignoring the owner’s protest of _do you not understand personal space_. “You’re making me feel like all these months have come to nothing.”

“When you put it like that,” Yugyeom runs a hand along the length of Kunpimook’s arm, slowing down when their fingers touch, before he withdraws it abruptly to look at the clock. “What time is it?”

“Late,” Kunpimook yawns, already used to this ritual. “And yes, I wouldn’t mind staying.”

“Now that’s just rude,” Yugyeom says dryly, as he begins to roll Kunpimook off the bed. “Go take a shower. And stop violating my pillow.”

“My sincerest apologies,” Kunpimook says gravely to the pillow, before he’s trundled off the bed like a barrel, squalling in indignity when he hits the floor.

He emerges from the shower ten minutes later in a set of Yugyeom’s clothes, feeling ridiculously small.

“In another life this would be extremely romantic,” he announces, plucking at the shirt, which hangs off his shoulders like a flag. “But it’s really just very cold.”

Yugyeom laughs, beckoning him to come over- Kunpimook doesn’t miss the book he slides under the bed, nor the clean lilac highlighter on the bedside table. “I can think of ways to warm you up.”

“Ew, you did not,” Kunpimook makes a face, sliding onto the bed and into Yugyeom’s arms nonetheless. “That was disgusting. Take it back.”

“Can’t,” Yugyeom says lazily, running a hand through the tangles in his freshly wet hair. “You can’t take back the truth.”

“Should I be alarmed,” Kunpimook makes himself comfortable, dragging up the covers to swathe them both in fabric. It’s true, he admits grudgingly- Yugyeom _is_ nicely warm. He wonders when it is they’d decided this level of contact was acceptable, in the relationship they have now, because it doesn’t need a genius to say that what they have is unorthodox, and impossible to categorise. But like many other things, he takes it in his stride and learns to work with it. Besides, if he’s to be honest, it isn’t particularly unpleasant, it might be nice, even (but you didn’t hear that from him).

“Yes,” Yugyeom yawns. He lets a comfortable silence stretch, then before continuing hesitantly, “about the party tomorrow…”

“Mm…?” Kunpimook’s eyelids had been drooping shut, but something about Yugyeom’s tone makes him tense a little.

“Nothing much,” Yugyeom says hastily, running another large, warm hand down the older man’s shoulders and back. “Did Jackson say anything to you about it?”

“No…? I think he’s going to try and say he forgot about it,” Kunpimook stretches his legs out, disappointed when he can’t feel Yugyeom’s feet under the blanket, even in their current position. “Why? Planning a tryst?”

Yugyeom doesn’t respond at first, seemingly deep in thought. It’s clear, though, later when he speaks, in a careful, concise way, that he’d merely been contemplating how to phrase his words.

“The reason why Jinyoung-hyung asked you first,” he says cautiously. “It’s because he wanted to put Jackson in a spot later about coming to the party. Jackson didn’t want to, at first- I think Jackson’s more pissed with Jaebum-hyung than he has been in a while because hyung won over a couple of contracts recently that were supposed to go to him, and he didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of going to their party.”

Kunpimook doesn’t know what to say, for a moment. “Does Jinyoung do stuff like this often?”

“Jinyoung-hyung?” Yugyeom sounds a little incredulous. “This is the tip of the iceberg, if you ask me. He managed to convince Jaebum-hyung to allocate a giant portion of their resources to his company when they were restructuring, once- loads of workers got laid off, rumours spread like wildfire, and Jaebum’s company suffered huge losses in the global market. He could afford it, sure, but still,” Kunpimook doesn’t like the way Yugyeom seems to lose control of the way he speaks when he talks about Jinyoung, like he’s just as panicked and unsure as Kunpimook is. And he’s known Jinyoung for so much longer, too. “It’s crazy, the way he can make Jaebum-hyung do anything he wants.”

“Hey, stop that,” Kunpimook pushes at Yugyeom’s shoulder lightly. “You say that like you’ll be tangled up in it all. Hands clean and fists up, remember?”

Yugyeom chuckles drily. “Jaebum-hyung might be a real asshole, but he’s still my cousin,” he gives a wry smile. “I grew up with him, you know- my mom thought the habits from the rich side of the family might rub off on me,” he tugs the blankets up, covering a part of Kunpimook’s arms that’d previously been exposed to the cool bite of the air-conditioning. “They did, I guess. Just not in the way she would’ve wanted.”

It’s a tiny revelation of Yugyeom’s childhood, and Kunpimook treasures it with both hands.

“I think you turned out alright,” he leans up with a mischievous smile. “Would’ve helped to have some of those good looks rub off on you, though-…”

Yugyeom delves a deft hand under the blankets, then, and it takes the older man about half a second to realise what’s about to happen, but by then, it’s too late, and he squeals, jerking away from Yugyeom across the bed.

The extent of Yugyeom’s strength only presents itself on select occasions, and as those long arms reach across the space and drag Kunpimook back easily, almost lazily, even, to pin him to the bed and tickle him until he gives in and begs for mercy, he decides that this is one of them.

He knows Yugyeom hates being compared to Jaebum, but it’s in that moment Kunpimook sees a trait they unmistakeably share- the single-minded, overpowering desire that throbs through their veins and heart to fully control, to _monopolise_ , except that while Jaebum establishes his control publicly, Yugyeom channels it on an unspoken level, one that reaches out with saccharine fingers and chains those unfortunate enough to pass by willingly to his soul.

Yugyeom offers to take the couch for the night, but by some means they both end up accidentally falling asleep as they are, talking about nothing until coherence leaves them as they slip into slumber. Yugyeom knocks off first- and Kunpimook can’t be bothered to get up and move, so he follows suit a few minutes later.

And honestly, as he drowsily recounts the built up of events from day one till now, it isn’t as bad as he’d thought it be.  
  
*

The “little gathering” Jinyoung had mentioned turns out to be the biggest party Kunpimook’s ever been to in his life. And he’s been to a lot of parties.

He wonders, mutely, as he’s milling through crowds of important people, if Jaebum had been trying to break some world record or something, because this level of decadence is honestly verging on insane. He’d thrown the party at one of the chains of hotels he’d bought over, making use of the ridiculously luxurious ballroom and pool facilities, giving out hundred-dollar bottles of champagne as _door gifts,_ and had apparently booked out all the rooms for a portion of the more personal guests for the night.

“Bambam!” a steely grip closes on his arm, and he’s dragged over by Jinyoung, obviously dressed to impress for the night. His eyes are traced, glittering, even, under the purposefully dim light, hair newly cut and styled for the event, everything done by professionals, and Kunpimook’s sure that if he totals up the worth of his stellar outfit (not including the gleaming silvery watch he always wears, a gift from Jaebum, he’s sure) it’d come to about a year and a half’s wages. “I’ve been looking _everywhere_ for you! You look _wonderful_ tonight, you really do-…”

Kunpimook’s quite sure Jinyoung hadn’t been _looking_ _everywhere_ for him until he’d happened to bump into him a few seconds ago, nor does he think Kunpimook _looks wonderful_ , not next to Jinyoung himself, but the older man has a manner of speaking that charms the listener into a state of what can only be described as blissful atrophy, so they don’t process a thing he says until he dances away to cast a spell over someone else. And by this time, of course, it’s too late, and Jinyoung’s already taken what he wants from them right under their noses.

“Jackson sends his apologies, he has something to attend to, but he’ll be coming later tonight,” Kunpimook tries to say over the sound of people talking and laughing and the music of the famous jazz band Jaebum had hired to perform onstage.

“Oh that’s alright, then,” Jinyoung says distractedly, seeming to be looking in the crowd for someone. “Yugyeommie!”

Yugyeom, of course, appears when called, mildly surprised at the sight of Jinyoung and Kunpimook together. He’s even more surprised when Jinyoung pushes the younger boy towards him, with a little laugh that sounds both magical and disturbingly condescending.

“Entertain our guest, won’t you Yugyeommie?” Jinyoung’s eyes are already on another guest, attention forever flitting from one open heart to another. “And help me find Jaebum! He’s left me to attend to our guests all by myself, that selfish-…”

And he’s swept away by the tide of million dollar men and women, much to Kunpimook’s relief.

“Uhm,” he avoids the swinging fists of a passing couple, obviously drunk beyond belief. “Hey.”

Yugyeom smiles, the sight reassuringly familiar to Kunpimook. “Hey. Want a drink?”

“Sounds good,” he forces a grin. “I’ll have what you’re having.”

“I passed some smoked salmon canapes on the way here, too, you’ve got to try them,” Yugyeom guides them on smoothly towards the finger food table, and Kunpimook’s inexplicably relieved at the thought of getting out of here- the room’s overpowered by the scents of a thousand different perfumes and colognes, and his toes have been trodden on at least thrice within the last twenty minutes. “By the way, I think Jinyoung’s serious about us finding Jaebum-hyung, I haven’t seen him anywhere so far tonight.”

“Is he _always_ this clingy?” Kunpimook mutters, plucking a tart deftly from the tray of a passing waiter and popping it into his mouth. “The last time at the restaurant, too, the moment Jaebum left to take that phone call, he looked like the world was about to end.”

“He’s got good reason to,” Yugyeom remarks, taking a flute of champagne from the ones set out on the glossy black minimalist banquet table and handing it to him. “The door to the foyer’s this way- maybe he’s on the mezzanine.”

“Great,” the older man grumbles, taking a generous sip from his drink. “I can’t wait to get out of this place.”

*

 _This place_ turns out to be ridiculously huge.

“I swear,” Kunpimook complains. “I could do a tour of the grounds every day for exercise.”

“Jaebum-hyung likes his toys big,” Yugyeom steers Kunpimook away from the fountain, where someone (who’s apparently decided the pool was too mainstream) has appropriated it and started splashing everyone that comes within a metre radius. “Don’t say it.”

“Wasn’t going to.”

“Liar.”

“We could look in the suites,” Kunpimook suggests, nodding towards the lifts in the lobby. “He might’ve gotten so drunk someone brought him in his room.”

“I need another drink,” Yugyeom sighs, as they load into an elevator. “Jinyoung-hyung better really need some help.”

The doorman holds out his hand, presumably for their cards, and Kunpimook reaches for his but Yugyeom cuts him off.

“You don’t have clearance,” he mutters to the older boy, before clearing his throat, handing over a card, embossed in a significantly more expensive looking gold and black than Kunpimook’s plain bronze card. “I’m looking for Jaebum-ssi, he’s in the presidential suites.”

The doorman seemingly doesn’t have a problem with Yugyeom going wherever he likes in this hotel, but he casts a questioning glance in Kunpimook’s direction, eyes searching the younger man’s ones for confirmation.

“He’s with me,” Yugyeom gestures. The doorman hesitates, so he adds for effect: “Jinyoung sent us.”

 _Jinyoung sent us_ apparently works wonders, because they get a ride up straight away, no further questions asked. The doorman even adds a _have a nice evening_ after they get out.

“Must be great, having your own hotel,” Kunpimook remarks. “Be nice if Jackson would stop investing in oil refineries and get his hands on one of these.”

“Nah, I don’t think he wants to have anything to do with whatever Jaebum does,” Yugyeom seems to know where he’s headed, because he walks purposefully down the corridor.  “Wait till he gets an onsen. Then you’re inviting _me_.”

“I don’t think that’s up to us, now, is it?” Kunpimook laughs, as Yugyeom stops outside the door at the end of the hallway.

“Hyung?” he knocks, three sharp sounds against the polished wooden door. There’s no reply. “Hyung, if you’re in there, I’m coming in, Jinyoung’s looking for you.”

Kunpimook’s about to question how Yugyeom thinks he’s going to get in when he takes out that same black and gold card, slotting it into the hotel door, before a soft green light above the slot flashes.

“He gave you his _room card_?” he’s a little incredulous. Yugyeom shrugs, cautiously pushing the door open.

“It’s a skeleton key, of sorts,” he stows it carefully in his jacket again. “I’m usually the one in charge of dragging him back from whatever place he’s passed out in when he gets drunk,” he mutters, looking into the brightly lit place. There’s no sign of life, just a hallway leading to a living room full of splendour. “I guess he’s really not here.”

Kunpimook steps aside as Yugyeom moves to shut the door, just about to make some comment about how Jackson ought to give him some privileges too, for calling his chauffeur to drive his drunk ass home every time after a party, when he swears he sees something move out the corner of his eye, darting quickly across the hall to the adjacent rooms, followed by the faint, stifled sounds of light laughter.

“Hey, uhm,” he nudges Yugyeom, frowning a little. “Who else can get up here?”

“No one,” Yugyeom’s just shut the door. “There are three presidential suites, so Jaebum booked the whole floor for him and Jinyoung. Why?”

“I saw someone, heading over to the suite over there,” Kunpimook points, taking a few steps forward. “Is it possible to get here without passing the doorman?”

“Yeah,” Yugyeom’s following, pace urgent and his brow creasing. “Bribes,” they round the corner, just in time to see someone scuttle into the room at the end of the corridor. “Excuse me,” he calls out, voice carrying easily, even in the lengthy space, as they near the suite. “You don’t have clearance to be up here-…”

“ _Yugyeom,_ ” someone’s voice rings out, authoritative and clear, and Yugyeom stops so fast Kunpimook walks right into him from behind. Half-dazed and rather annoyed, he peers over Yugyeom’s shoulder, touching his nose gingerly to make sure it isn’t broken. His heart seems to stop, though, when someone reappears from the doorway.

It’s Jaebum, tie loosened and hanging around his neck, barely covering up the fact that the top three buttons of his dress shirt have been undone. A split second’s further observation shows his belt’s unbuckled, too, hanging open from the loops, and Kunpimook instinctively takes a step back in alarm.

_Shit._

“Sorry, hyung, I didn’t realise-…Jinyoung wanted to find you and I-…” Yugyeom’s stammers are interrupted by another voice, a whine, almost, from inside the room, and Kunpimook’s struck by the familiarity of it for a second.

“Hyung, who is it? Who’s that?”

“We’ll go now, sorry hyung,” Yugyeom’s grip around Kunpimook’s wrist is bruising, almost, as he turns around and almost drags him from the place, and the older boy stumbles after him, ankle twisting in his haste. Over the sound of their shoes against the carpet, he can hear Jaebum’s reassurances, sickeningly soothing compared to his usual domineering tangents.

“It’s no one, Jae. They’re nobody.”  
  
  
  



	4. symmetrophobic

  
  
“Shit,” Kunpimook doesn’t know how, but they manage to make it to Yugyeom’s room, one of the more common suites on another level, and he sinks into the sofa the moment he gets in. “That was  _way_ too close-…”

He doesn’t think he’s ever seen Yugyeom looking this stressed. The younger man crosses the room in four strides, opening a bottle of whiskey that had been sitting in the mini bar, and pouring himself a drink. His fingers are shaking when he tips it into his mouth.

“You saw him,” he says finally, voice trembling. “I should’ve known, I should’ve _known_ Jaebum was seeing him tonight, shit, now he’s going to-…”

He finishes the glass, about to pour himself another, when Kunpimook speaks up.

“ _Stop that_ ,” he snaps, a sharp pain shooting up his leg when he tries to stand. “It’s _fine._ I’m not going to tell anyone.”

“Tell Jaebum-hyung that,” Yugyeom lets out a dry laugh, setting the cup down on the table anyway, and Kunpimook watches his fingers grip the smooth edge of the glass surface.

The older man buries his face in his hands. “Tell me it’s not who I think it is. This is just _screwed up_.”

Yugyeom manages to look more wired than he already is at those words. “You know who it is?”

“Of course, I hear that voice every _day_ over the PA,” Kunpimook slumps back into his chair. “Choi Youngjae, right? Jackson’s secretary?”

Somehow, the thought of any relation between Jaebum and Jackson in this way is harder to take than the idea of Jaebum having an extramarital affair. With the way Jinyoung treats Jaebum, sometimes, it’s almost understandable that the other man would want a breather sometimes. Of course, this doesn’t make the notion any less detestable in Kunpimook’s eyes.

“Choi Youngjae,” Yugyeom echoes, pouring another glass, handing it to Kunpimook this time, and the older man takes an absent sip. “Surprised?”

“Considering the fact that I’ve walked in on him bent over Jackson’s desk more than once, yes, I am, really,” Kunpimook comments flatly, knocking the drink back. “Does Jaebum know?”

Yugyeom’s eyes are wide with alarm. “He…what?”

“Does Jaebum know that his lover is having frequent sex with his business rival,” the older boy says impatiently.

“Even _I_ didn’t know that,” Yugyeom runs a hand through his hair, seemingly lost in thought.

“Well, _duh_ ,” Kunpimook blurts out, affronted. “He’s the one I told you Jackson was _busy_ with all the time. And he’s his _secretary._ Isn’t that like, a default kind of thing?”

“Yeah, but,” Yugyeom seems to be disturbed by the fact that something so big has been occurring without his knowledge. “Youngjae didn’t give a _hint_ , I mean-…”

“Wait, you know him?” Kunpimook blinks. “Youngjae, I mean?”

Yugyeom bristles. “I arrange their meetings sometimes,” he mutters, walking over to take a seat beside Kunpimook. “When Jinyoung’s being particularly clingy and Jaebum-hyung can’t get away from him, he usually pushes the whole business of contacting him to me.”

“You poor man.”

“It’s alright, I guess, at least he’s civil-…” Yugyeom inhales, closing his eyes for a moment, like he’s trying to shake bad memories. “Does Jackson know?”

“I don’t think so?” Kunpimook shifts uncomfortably on the sofa. “I think we were all under the impression Youngjae was some angel, or something,” he grimaces a little. “All these years, I never thought he was…he was always so _timid_ , you know, I didn’t think he was capable of _doing_ something like this. All that time spent acting daft as a daisy when he was actually sleeping around with Jackson’s biggest business rival behind his back-… _damn._ ”

“Hyung’s not going to let you off easily on this one,” Yugyeom rests his weight on his knees, rubbing at his eyes tiredly. “I think he thinks you’re going to tell Jackson the moment you see him again.”

“What, does he think I’m stupid?” Kunpimook says irritably, though admittedly, he thinks that if he’d found this out on his own, not because Yugyeom’d brought him up there, he would’ve told Jackson for sure. “Of course I’m not going to tell him.”

He makes to get up to pour himself another drink, but the pain that shoots up his leg from his ankle like lightning forces him to sit again.

“How’s your leg?” Yugyeom says in concern, putting his glass down to inspect the foot in question, and Kunpimook shifts it away in annoyance.

“It’s fine, I just twisted it being dragged away by you, it’ll be okay by tomorrow,” he mutters, taking Yugyeom’s glass instead and finishing half of it in one go, relief rushing in at the alcohol sliding down his throat.

“And you were the one telling _me_ to stop,” Yugyeom mutters, getting up. “I’ll call the staff for some ice, maybe that’ll help with the swelling.”

Kunpimook swirls the remainder of the alcohol in his glass as Yugyeom makes the call, mulling the night’s events over in his head. He’s surprised at the lack of fear he feels- he did technically just find out something that might just get him into major trouble with one of the most powerful men in the country.

But he realises a moment later, in alarm, that he knows why. It’s Yugyeom, Yugyeom and the confusing rush of emotion he feels whenever he comes into contact with the man that gives him this ridiculous sense of reckless invincibility. Like he could stand up to anyone against them and come out of it alive.

Which is stupid, because Kunpimook’s only managed to survive this long by talking his way into everyone’s good books- _conflict_ , of any sort, would be a step down a deadly slippery slope.

“It’ll come in a while,” Yugyeom says when he puts down the phone, straightening his dress shirt as he resumes his position by Kunpimook’s side. “I ordered some chamomile, too, in case either of us start to go into panic.”

“Great, I think I’m going to need to sleep for the next few years to forget all this,” the older man grumbles. “How I’m going to face Youngjae when I get back to work on Monday, I don’t even know-…”

Yugyeom lets out a short laugh. “You haven’t seen the worst of them, tonight was _decent_. You know Jaebum’s convertible? The red one he never lets anyone drive, not even Jinyoung? I think they’ve been at it in every way possible in that thing.”

“Shut up, you haven’t _heard_ the stuff going on in Jackson’s office,” Kunpimook scoffs. “I swear, if I went in there with one of those blacklight things in CSI, it’d look like abstract art.”

Yugyeom doesn’t speak for a moment, just staring across the room at the blank television screen.

“You know, tonight,” he muses. “On paper, it’s the celebration of Jaebum and Jinyoung’s first five years. But I just remembered…he first met Youngjae a year ago this night too.”

“By _met_ you mean brought back to a hotel and had sex with, right?” Kunpimook yawns, shifting closer to Yugyeom’s side. Then, “poor Jinyoung.”

“Oh, I think Jinyoung _knows_ ,” Yugyeom murmurs, arm coming to rest absently around Kunpimook’s shoulders. “He just doesn’t know who it is,” he shudders. “God help Youngjae if he ever finds out.”

“You say that like Jinyoung can _do_ anything about it,” Kunpimook laughs, starting to feel light-headed from the alcohol. “Underhanded business deals and wrapping Jaebum around his little finger is one thing, and actually _hurting_ someone’s another, you know.”

Yugyeom doesn’t look convinced. “You haven’t known him for five years. He can be terrifying when he wants to.”

Silence saturates the air for a moment, just enough for Kunpimook to think it over. “Well,” he murmurs, pressing closer into the crook of Yugyeom’s arm. “Fists up and hands clean, right?”

“Not when it comes to Jinyoung,” Yugyeom chuckles hollowly. “He wasn’t brought up rich, you know- the rest of them were. That’s what makes them predictable. But with Jinyoung, you never know.”

“You’ve survived to this day,” Kunpimook pats Yugyeom on the back. “Take that as a guarantee of sorts.”

Yugyeom laughs, the sound soft and reassuring, though he’s supposedly the worried one here, and Kunpimook settles comfortably against him, feeling inexplicably safe despite the circumstances.

“Hey,” Yugyeom begins all of a sudden then, a little uncomfortably. “You know, I’ve just been thinking-…did Jackson ever- you know-…”

“Proposition me?” Kunpimook asks lazily, taking another sip from his glass. “Yeah. Back in college, a couple of times.”

“Did you…?”

Kunpimook laughs, low and bitter. “Nope. Never.”

He wonders if that’s relief he hears in the sigh that escapes Yugyeom’s lips, almost inaudible, or if he’s just being hopeful. “Why, though?”

“Why didn’t I have sex with him?” Kunpimook thinks about it, for a moment. “Because then he’d stop having a reason to keep me around.”

Yugyeom nods thoughtfully. “Ah. Denial, am I right?”

Kunpimook laughs. “Exactly.”

“You weren’t afraid he might get pissed off and leave?”

“It’s not _what_ you do, exactly, it’s just _how_ you do it,” Kunpimook takes another sip despite the comfortable haze forming over his head. “I just knew how to turn him down without him getting angry.”

“Hm.”

Kunpimook rests his head on Yugyeom’s shoulder, revelling in the warmth that seems to emanate from his body. “Did any of them ever proposition you?”

“Yeah,” Yugyeom doesn’t seem to think much of it. “A couple of times.”

“Who?”

Yugyeom laughs. “Jackson,” he says, as if the thought’s ridiculous. “Back when he just took over his dad’s company, and Jaebum started to irritate him. I think he wanted some way of getting one up on him. I remember wondering how stupid he thought I was, to think I might accept something like that. No offence.”

Kunpimook snickers. “Something else we have in common.”

“It’s a little disturbing, if you don’t mind me saying,” Yugyeom makes a face.

“Youngjae doesn’t seem to have a problem with it.”

Yugyeom’s about to open his mouth to say a _that’s going too far_ or something to a similar effect when a crisp knock at the door shakes them both out of the conversation.

“That’s fast,” Yugyeom straightens, getting up from the couch, until the door swings open and he freezes.

Jaebum’s standing in the doorway, tucking another black and gold card into his pocket, considerably more dressed than they’d seen him just now.

“Yugyeom, if you’d step outside for a moment,” he says, brushing an invisible speck of dust off his jacket. “I need to speak to Bambam alone.”

“It’s-…it’s okay, hyung, I spoke to him already,” Yugyeom sends a nervous look back, a silent plea in his voice that only makes itself heard whenever he speaks to Jaebum. “He won’t say a thing, he promised-…”

“I suppose you think _his promise_ is valid,” Jaebum sounds a little amused, a little impatient. “Go outside. I’ll call you when I’m done.”

“Hyung-…”

“Yugyeom,” Jaebum steps in, eyes flashing, and Kunpimook watches, breath held, as Yugyeom stands perfectly still for a moment.

But then the second passes, and he ducks his head, walking out of the room silently. The sight is oddly painful to watch, but Jaebum doesn’t seem to think anything of it, because he closes the door behind him and takes a leisurely step towards Kunpimook. “Bambam, isn’t it?”

“Yessir,” Kunpimook doesn’t think the _hyung_ invitation extends to this moment. “About just now-…”

“I believe you knew who that was,” Jaebum cuts through his words smoothly, as he plucks a cigarette from a box in his jacket, before offering one to Kunpimook, who declines politely. “And his relation to yourself and to Jackson.”

“Yes,” he replies, unable to think of anything else to say. He wonders how Jaebum can muster the audacity to face him after being caught in an act like that- how he’s been facing Jinyoung all this time, too.

“And I assume you know the consequences of Jackson ever finding out about such an event,” Jaebum lights the cigarette, taking a relaxed drag on it, before stowing the lighter in his vest. “It’d cause a lot of trouble, both for Jackson and for Youngjae, and we wouldn’t want that to happen, would we?”

 _You mean it’d cause a lot of trouble for you_.

“No sir,” Kunpimook says respectfully.

“So do we have an understanding here?”

“Yes.”

“Good,” Jaebum sighs, seemingly already disinterested in the conversation, heading for the door. Yugyeom’s on the phone, across the tiny space in the corridor, when he opens the door, eyes questioning.

Kunpimook watches with narrowed eyes as Jaebum gestures impatiently for Yugyeom to hand the phone to him.

“Yes, Jinyoungie, I’m with Yugyeom now, we’re heading to the ballroom,” the amount of calm in his voice is infuriating, almost, as he replies to whatever Jinyoung’s saying on the phone. “Yeah, I got held up with a pretty disagreeable guest- I needed to close the deal for the five year manufacturing contract. Yes, we’re on our way.”

_The gall of him, honestly._

“I wish he wouldn’t ask so many _questions_ ,” Jaebum mutters after he hangs up, handing the phone back without a second glance. He casts Kunpimook a final look, before turning to Yugyeom. “What’s Bambam doing here anyway? Isn’t this your room?”

“He twisted his ankle when I was pulling him away,” Yugyeom says quickly, and Kunpimook obligingly lifts his slightly swollen foot. “My room was closer.”

“Ah,” Jaebum says, sharp eyes flicking from Yugyeom, then to Kunpimook. The older man knows Yugyeom’s said something right- men like Jaebum have codes to follow, and for him to aggravate an injured person might not have the best consequences in hindsight, especially considering said injured person is his business rival’s friend. “Fine, then. We’re going now,” he says to Yugyeom, starting off down the corridor. “I’ll need your help with Jinyoung later.”

_You mean you need help distracting Jinyoung later so he doesn’t see you screwing your lover in the neighbouring suite._

“But hyung-…” Yugyeom turns, then, giving Kunpimook a look, and the older man flinches, hoping his eyes convey that _it’s fine, just go so he’ll shut up_. But Jaebum’s apparently too impatient to notice anything, checking his watch as he looks down the corridor.

“ _Yugyeom_ ,” and it’s that same voice he’d heard at the suites not too long ago, somehow more imperious and commanding in the tiny space than it’d been in the hallway. Jaebum gestures with an annoyed hand, curling his fingers towards him. “Come with me. Now.”

And Yugyeom’s drawn towards him miserably, almost like a dog on a leash, unable to even look back as he follows Jaebum along the corridor, and the door clicks shut smartly behind them, leaving Kunpimook alone in the room, feeling sicker than ever.

*

Jackson never arrives at the party. Kunpimook awaits a text, or a call, or something, but his phone remains uncharacteristically silent. He’s thankful, if he’s to be honest, because he doesn’t think he can walk around pandering to the older man’s needs with his ankle in this state. Vaguely, he wonders what Jackson’s excuse will be, before deciding that it really doesn’t matter. Jaebum and Jinyoung have enough on their hands tonight, especially with the appearance of this elusive third party, and Jackson’s absence won’t leave a mark.

He’s showered and curled up under the blankets when Yugyeom comes back, the sound of his arrival obvious by the way he tosses his jacket over the sofa in the en suite living room, before walking into the bedroom, irritably loosening his tie.

“Everything go as planned?” Kunpimook calls over the sound of him trudging into the bathroom to wash his face.

“If by _as planned_ , you mean I had to keep Jinyoung busy enough for Jaebum-hyung to _disappear upstairs_ on,” he pauses for a moment, counting on his fingers. “Four occasions,” he grabs a sterilised hand towel, rubbing it into his face. “Yeah, things went pretty swell.”

“That’s just nasty,” Kunpimook comments, as Yugyeom unbuttons his shirt with deft, annoyed movements. “How was Jinyoung?”

“Tonight-…” the younger man runs a hand through his hair, sighing in frustration. “I don’t know, he was kind of calm about it. Usually he’d freak out when he doesn’t have hyung in his sights, tonight he was just kind of, okay about everything.”

“Maybe he’s getting used to the idea Jaebum has someone else,” Kunpimook lifts his leg out from under the blanket, inspecting his ankle. “Told you he’d just have to deal with it.”

“I don’t think so,” Yugyeom mutters darkly, wandering back into the bathroom. “He’s planning something, for sure- I can’t believe Jaebum-hyung dared to invite Youngjae over to his party with Jinyoung _right there_ , usually he waits until Jinyoung’s busy with work or when they’ve had an argument.”

Kunpimook rubs at his eyes, reaching out with a lazy arm. “Just shower and get over here, I’m beat. Accidentally discovering affairs and being threatened with death for it is hard work,” he glances over at Yugyeom, still staring hard into an indiscriminate spot in the wall. “Don’t worry so much about it- as long as we keep our nose out of where it doesn’t belong, we’re good, remember?”

“That ended the moment you say Youngjae and Jaebum-hyung together,” Yugyeom laughs drily, but something throbs, pained and anxious, gnawing at him like a dog on a bone, behind the lightness to his tone. “It ended the moment you got to know Jackson.”

“I’m still alive,” Kunpimook smiles cheekily. “I’ll take that as a sort of guarantee.”

Yugyeom settles near the foot of the bed, and for the first time, under the soft light scattered down from the ceiling, Kunpimook sees the bags under his eyes, the hollowness behind his pupils, exhaustion that’s been worn into his body, saturating his soul, and it’s then he feels a rush of indignity, of anger, that seeps through the cracks in his mind to pour from his mouth when he speaks next.

“Why do you let him push you around like that?” he blurts out, and it’s the closest he’s ever treaded with regards to the subject. They make it a point, an unsaid rule, never to question each other about the way they work, but Kunpimook can’t help it, can’t help feeling something well up inside him every time he sees Yugyeom forced under Jaebum’s thumb again. “If Jackson ever treated me like that I’d be up and out in seconds.”

Yugyeom laughs, a terrible, heartbreaking kind of sound. “You don’t get it.”

“I don’t have to get it to see that he’s treating you like some sort of _dog_ ,” Kunpimook argues. “You’re his _cousin_ , but he doesn’t even give you the respect he should be giving his _staff._ ”

“Have you actually _seen_ the way he treats his staff? How he talks to me is _civilised_ for someone like him,” Yugyeom pushes his hair away from his face, rubbing his eyes wearily. “Just-…you haven’t known him for long enough, you wouldn’t understand.”

Kunpimook stares hard at him for a moment, almost glaring. “Why do you let him do this to you? He doesn’t even let you say _no_ or _later_ or _I can’t_. Now you’re stuck doing all his dirty work for him and Jinyoung. Just-…” he folds his arms across his chest, the starched fabric of the blankets rustling at the movement. “Why?”

Yugyeom seems to be wondering why, himself, because his dark eyes, usually sharp, focused in deadly concentration, seem to glaze over, like he’s recalling something.

“You know, I told you we grew up together, because my mom wanted me to be just like him,” Yugyeom stands, slowly, taking thoughtful steps forward aimlessly at a glacial pace. “So when he was eleven and I was five, I’d go over to his house almost all the time. And he had this room _full_ of toys. Can you imagine? A room _just_ for his toys. Cars, airplanes, little grand prix and train tracks, you name it, he had it.”

For a moment, Kunpimook imagines the younger man as a little boy, standing reluctantly in the doorway of what must’ve seemed like a glorified mansion, shuttled to and fro like cargo to play with someone twice his age. It’s a painful sight, even as a third party who’d had nothing to do with it staring in from the outside.

“But even with all those toys, he always had a favourite game to play whenever I came around, with his Lego blocks,” Yugyeom lets out a little laugh, like it’s funny, now, thinking about it. “He’d take the box of bricks- a big, red box, and I remember he could always carry it so well because he was so much older and bigger, and he’d just throw the whole thing on the floor,” he makes a careless swinging motion with his arm. “And I remember the pieces would just fly everywhere, till the whole floor was covered in Lego blocks even though the room was so big. And then he’d point to the floor,” he laughs again. “And he’d tell me: _pick it up,_ ” his voice seems to go dead when he says that, like he’s heard the echo of those three words in his nightmares so many times he’s forgotten what they actually sound like.

“So I did. Every single time.”

“What the _hell_ ,” Kunpimook hisses. “What kind of _screwed up shitbrain_ was he? How the hell did you deal with that?”

Yugyeom shrugs. “I became excellent at cleaning and fixing things. And being optimistic.”

“That’s not the point!” Kunpimook splutters. “That’s like _child abuse_ or some shit _,_ I _swear_ he could go to _jail_ for that or something.”

“Well the thing is,” Yugyeom continues drily. “I think his father liked the attitude, the whole _domineering confident accept-nothing-but-the-best_ kind of thing, so his parents never said a word. I guess I just kind of grew up accepting Jaebum-hyung had the right to tell me to what to do.”

“Tell me you’re going to stop it,” Kunpimook leans forward, unable to conceal the undertone of urgency in his voice. “What if he wants you to do something _worse_ than just making sure Jinyoung doesn’t see him getting sucked off in some hotel or dragging him back after he gets drunk? What if he wants you to do something-…I don’t know, something illegal? You’re just going to say _yes_?”

“He won’t,” Yugyeom says, though he doesn’t sound so convinced. Kunpimook sighs in frustration, tossing the covers aside.

“Why’d you put up with all that after you grew up?” he bites out. “You could’ve gotten out of it when you were sixteen or seventeen, right?”

Yugyeom tosses the face towel in his hand onto the dresser top, turning away from Kunpimook. “Sure, I hated him when I was young, but-…I hated me more, you know? I hated not having as much money as he did, hated my mom for bringing me back there even though I said I didn’t want to, hated the idea of staying this way for the rest of my life,” he shrugs. “And Jaebum-hyung, every time my mom was about to bring me home, after I’d picked up everything and put it back, he’d reach up to the shelf and give me one of the toys in that giant room of toys of his, and he’d tell me that if I just did everything he told me to, I’d never have to be as poor as my family again,” he’s wandered, now, to the bottle of whiskey on the dresser, before pouring himself a glass. It’s unreal, the detached way he recounts all this, like he doesn’t care, or that he’s killed everything in himself that was once capable of that. “I guess I bought it.”

“You know you’ve got to stop it, right?” Kunpimook persists. “Look, why don’t you just _stand up to him_? You can just-…”

“You’re telling me what to do now, too?” Yugyeom’s voice takes a 180 degree turn, then, cracking like a whip across the tiny space, flaring and dangerously sharp, and it stuns the older man into silence. In a moment, though, the searing emotion that’d flashed in his eyes extinguishes itself, and he downs the rest of his drink, turning away in embarrassment. “Sorry, I’m not thinking straight-…”

“No, I-I’m sorry,” Kunpimook’s fingers wind into the soft covers, gripping tight, head lowered. “I was being insensitive. I just-…” he bites his lip, only daring to look up for a second and feeling something tighten in him when he finds Yugyeom looking straight back at him. “I can’t-…” it’s oddly difficult to say the one sentence in his mind, when he’s spun lies the length of novels on the spot without breaking a sweat. His mouth and mind had seemed to be one entity as compared to the moment now, when the words seem to get tangled and choked on the way from his heart to his lips. “I can’t-…can’t see you-…” he gestures half-heartedly. “Like this.”

He doesn’t look up- he can’t, not whilst wondering what line is it he’s crossed this time, what taboo it is he’s broken, and it feels like he’s committed a crime, which is ironic as anything, because all he’s done is tell the truth. But, then again, in their profession, in their relationship, woven on sweet lies and cool indifference, he knows something like that should only warrant capital punishment.

Yugyeom doesn’t speak, for a second, and though the older man would assume him to be thinking of what to say, fabricating lies and twisting words in ways only the two of them know so well, there’s something deeper in his silence, something woven into the stiffness of his shoulders and the steel in his posture.

Then he does something unexpected- he crosses the room slowly, dark, diamond eyes still lost in some sort of searching reverie, like he’s only halfway into this world, the other half wandering in whatever complex dimension he loses that great mind to every so often, and Kunpimook doesn’t move for a moment, taken aback by this uncharacteristic development.

So if something as simple as that can rattle the older man, it’s no surprise that he thinks his heart almost stops when Yugyeom leans down, gradual and leisurely, to press a soft kiss on his lips, surprisingly capable fingers guiding the other boy’s chin forward, opening him up.

It’s too much, too much reality and emotion and truth all at once, everything Kunpimook’s sworn to keep under suffocating control for as long as he lives, but like water through a dam weakened over time the desire for it bursts through, and his arms slide around Yugyeom’s neck almost unconsciously, pulling him closer.

When they break apart Kunpimook’s gasping for air- he hadn’t realised the need for it in the priceless half a minute that’d just passed, and for a moment they stare at each other, minds turning like clockwork, trying desperately to calculate the appropriate response and justification for what’d just happened and failing miserably.

“You should,” Kunpimook pushes him away, face burning. “You should go and shower.”

“Yeah,” Yugyeom seems slightly dazed, stumbling to his feet, fingers fumbling with the robe in the closet and closing the door quickly behind him once he enters.

But it can only be said that they are, after all, professionals in the business, so in the short span of Yugyeom’s shower they come to ironically, the same, safe conclusion.

The Yugyeom that leaves the bathroom and the Kunpimook that smiles at him from the bed are those that have convinced themselves of the fact that neither have admitted so openly and weakly to something as ridiculous as love, or affection, for that matter, and both are satisfied.

(Or not, depending on how you look at it.)  
  



	5. symmetrophobic

 

Kunpimook’s a little relieved when Yugyeom doesn’t contact him for the next few days after that. They both need time apart, time to struggle through figuring out whatever had been done to the comfortable relationship they’d both once known, time to determine if it’s a good or a bad thing. And Kunpimook, for one, is tipping dangerously towards deciding on the former.

He goes about work as usual, talking with Jackson occasionally over texts and calls, and laughing over inside jokes with the boys in his department, and for a moment it’s easy to believe the fantastical night at the hotel had been nothing but a dream.

That is, until Wednesday afternoon during lunch, when a soft hand curls around his elbow and pulls him away from his usual lunch crowd.

Kunpimook thinks he loses whatever appetite he has then.

“Bambam, d’you wanna have lunch together?” it’s Youngjae, all bright eyes and cool breath, smile as radiant as the sun as he tugs on his arm, speaking like they’ve been friends all their lives. Then, to his friends: “Do you mind if I borrow him, just for today?”

Kunpimook hopes to convey his desperation to _please, come up with something, say no_ but apparently none of his colleagues are as perceptive as Yugyeom, because they amble off obligingly, amused and congenial.

_Shit._

“We have loads of things to talk about, don’t we?” Youngjae links his arm with Kunpimook’s, dainty and sweet, as he practically drags him from the complex, to one of the cafes that line the streets of the business district.

The eatery is crowded with the lunchtime crowd, but Youngjae manages to snag a little table near the back easily, guiding Kunpimook to his seat with a steel in his grip that somehow feels like cotton and iron at the same time.

“Order whatever you like,” Youngjae singsongs, as the waiter comes by with the menu and slides one in front of each of them. “It’s my treat today.”

“Uh, it’s okay, actually, I’ll pay-…”

“You have to try the salmon, it’s _gorgeous,”_ Youngjae gushes, manoeuvring the menu with an effortless flick of his wrist to open it to the page in subject. “It’s so _rare_ to find good seafood anywhere these days.”

If Park Jinyoung’s voice were to be described as crystal, alluring and beautiful, Choi Youngjae’s would be described as sunshine. Soft, brilliant rays, incandescent and sweet and blinding, like a breeze through a field of flowers on a hot day, filling you with the desire for the overwhelming, but not particularly unwelcome, saccharine secrets that the world holds.

Kunpimook doesn’t know who to be more afraid of, one whose heart and mind could slice you into neat, clean pieces, or one whose soul could burn you alive.

“About that night,” Kunpimook cuts in, not pandering to any of the games Youngjae seems so intent on playing. He inhales deeply. “What is it you want to speak to me about?”

The light behind Youngjae’s eyes seems to dim- not like it’s been extinguished, particularly, but like the sunshine in it had gone behind a cloud, the light meting itself out with a quality bordering on severe, and Kunpimook finds himself wondering if he should’ve just gone along with the whole act.

“Excuse me,” he calls out, in a sweet, clear voice that gets a waiter to their table at once. “Could we have two passionfruit carafes, please?”

He rests his chin on his hand once the waiter’s gone, head tilting in a natural dreamy sway that shows Kunpimook immediately how he’d managed to lure both Jaebum and Jackson into this desperate chase for him, one that would, in Jaebum’s case, last for a year, even. It’s the way he gives off this air of the need to be protected, secured, what would invoke the need for men like them to _control_ him.

“Bambam, isn’t it?” he says, a thoughtful roll to the syllables of the nickname, almost like he’s _tasting_ it. Kunpimook feels uncomfortable just hearing it like that. “Jackson’s friend from Stanford?”

“Yes,” Kunpimook shifts in his seat. “Look, I already promised Jaebum I wouldn’t say a word-…”

“I don’t think a promise to _him_ can be counted, can it?” Youngjae says sweetly, leaning forward by barely an inch. “Not when he can’t keep an eye on you all the time. Not when _you_ know something he doesn’t, right?”

The younger man thins his lips. “What are you saying, exactly?”

“I want you to promise _me_ ,” Youngjae’s voice tips over the edge of saccharine persuasion- something sharper, deadlier, cuts through Kunpimook’s façade of cool professionalism. “ _Neither_ of them will ever know more than what they’re supposed to, understood?”

Their carafes arrive, but Kunpimook barely notices. He honestly thinks he’d feel too sick to drink a sip.

“Why are you even doing this?” he says, wincing a little at the doe-eyed look of innocent confusion Youngjae flashes him. “Just one of them would be enough to-…to _support_ you- why _both_?”

He thinks of Jinyoung for a moment, thinks of the worry that flashes through his eyes whenever Jaebum’s not around, and feels a stab of uneasy pity despite the manipulative nature of the other man. But he’s long trained himself to refrain from taking sides- besides, once you know everyone’s secrets, you’ll realise there isn’t quite one particular side you’ll be completely willing to take.

Youngjae thinks about Kunpimook’s question for a moment, a pale finger pressing against his plush lower lip in contemplation, before he smiles like a light bulb’s gone off in his head, lifting his right hand and pointing to the gorgeous diamond-encrusted ring on his forefinger that must’ve cost a bomb.

“You see, _this_ is from Jaebum,” he says primly, before pointing to the slender silver watch on his wrist, glinting softly. “And _this_ is from Jackson,” then to the Dolce and Gabbana fall edition leather wallet tossed carelessly on the table near his elbow, “Jaebum,” then he flips open the wallet, revealing a black and silver American Express credit card, “Jackson,” before finally gesturing to the rest of himself freely. “And everyone else,” he shrugs, beaming. “Why only have one when they can _fight_ to adorn you with their money? You think they don’t have a clue about what’s going on? They _know_ I don’t belong to them _entirely,_ but I just might, and they’ll just keep giving me more until I do. But, of course, you already knew all this, didn’t you?”

It’s a little unfortunate that Kunpimook’s only caught one thing in that entire mini monologue.

“Wait, you have _more?_ ” He can’t help the hint of disbelief that betrays him in his voice this time. Youngjae smiles again- and Kunpimook _notices_ , then, that while his smiles always reach his eyes, pretty and sincere, each and every one of them is eerily identical, like he’d spent ages in front of a mirror determining which one looked best on him, before finding this one and memorising the way it felt on his face.

“Kunpimook-ah,” he says finally, and the younger man jerks a little in shock at the use of his real name- no one besides Yugyeom has called him that in a while. “I understand you’re probably thinking I’m some kind of whore now, aren’t you?”

Kunpimook doesn’t respond to that. It doesn’t need a reply, in his opinion.

“Don’t,” Youngjae lets out a little laugh. “Hypocrisy looks bad on someone as smart as you.”

“Hypocrisy?” Kunpimook smiles listlessly, trying not to spit the words out. It pisses him off, a little, that Youngjae’s trying to manipulate him this way, as if he thinks the younger man’s stupid, or something. “I don’t quite see how we’re alike.”

“Oh, but we are,” Youngjae nods importantly, taking a sip from his carafe, and Kunpimook wonders how long it’d taken him to perfect lying with eyes as deceptively wide as his. “You and I both understand men like them,” he makes a magical little twirling motion with his fingers. “Our methods of ah, _working_ with them, are just a little different, that’s all.”

“Having _sex_ with them and being friends are two different things entirely,” Kunpimook has to struggle to keep the derogatory bite out of his tone.

“And I bet you think you’re _so noble_ ,” Youngjae snarls all of a sudden, without missing a beat, a cruel tilt to the edge of his pretty mouth, possibly the first real expression Kunpimook thinks he’s seen on his face. “You’re _just like_ me, Kunpimook-ah. Whatever happened to that insecure, adoring little hero-worshipper you become every time Jackson’s around? Just like the adorable, innocent secretary that can’t believe someone as _amazing_ as him would ever want someone like _me_ , don’t you think?” it’s amazing, how smoothly the venom from his voice disappears, replaced by a honeyed, uncertain undertone. “You’d be every bit as _detestable_ in society’s eyes as I’d be if they knew our secrets, _Bambam_ , so don’t _pretend_ to be above me. We know what we want and we know how to take it, and that’s who we are.”

Kunpimook is speechless, both from the audacity Youngjae has to speak to him like that, as well as the extent of the infection in his voice, the poison that just _drips_ from it, like syrup, almost. In the flare of vicious triumph that spikes in Youngjae’s voice, too, Kunpimook thinks he sees the shutters behind the windows of his eyes open, revealing something horrifyingly decayed and grossly virulent in the place where people’s souls usually exist.

It opens something other than the silent distaste he’d had for the other man, something that feels a little like fear and an awful lot like pity, because there’s a part of him that what on earth could have happened in his life to drive the other man to such twisted extents, and another part that’s afraid as anything that Youngjae’s telling the truth, that if he stares himself straight in the mirror and systematically tears down every wall he’s built around his mind, he’ll see the same infected, mutilated creature he’d glimpsed in Youngjae looking right back at him.

“Men like them _deserve_ to be taken from,” Youngjae says, the poisonous tint to his voice mellowing to an unmistakeable bitterness, as he runs a listless finger along the moist sides of his carafe. “Yugyeom, you and I, we’re the one and the same.”

For a moment, that makes Kunpimook wonder, almost, if Youngjae did have a heart of gold, once, a smile as bright as his is now, except it’d been as warm as it was beautiful, until something had happened, someone’d come along and made the angel go to bed obediently, only to wake up a monster.

Something hits him then, too, as that sinks in- rings a hollow, dead little bell in his head that echoes in a numbing sort of way.

“And it would do for people like us to stick together,” he echoes flatly after a moment, and Youngjae looks up.

“Yugyeom said that, didn’t he?” he stirs his drink with his straw indifferently, before taking a sip. There’s a pause as he considers his next words, an ellipse they’re all used to now, being in the business for so long. “What an idiot.”

“ _Don’t_ call him that,” Kunpimook says sharply, before he can rein himself in, and he sees Youngjae catch the reckless display of emotion easily.

Instead of turning it against him, though, like Kunpimook had been bracing for him to do, the older man thins his lips. “You’re one too, and so am I. We’re all sick, greedy, idiots.”

 _This_ is a little unexpected, so Kunpimook just sits and stares across the table in a silent, albeit grudgingly curious, rebellion, until Youngjae speaks again, this time like he couldn’t care less.

“He told me to leave.”

Kunpimook presses his lips together, uncertain of what to make of this revelation.

“Why didn’t you?” He supposes the question’s useless, now, but he can’t help it.

“Why?” Youngjae lets out a laugh that sounds more like a deadened exhale. “Why don’t _you_ leave and stop letting Jackson degrade you in front of everyone? Why doesn’t _he_ leave so Jaebum can’t push him around any longer?” he sips from his drink, eyes holding something that looks a lot like anger, except darker and colder. “We’re stuck, Kunpimook-ah, stuck in this grave we’re digging for ourselves, and stuck here we’ll die.”

*

It’s nearing midnight when Kunpimook emerges from the shower, collapsing straight onto his bed, indifferent to the way his hair leaves wet patches on the sheets as he grabs his phone from the dresser.

_met youngjae 2day._

He buries his face in his pillow, rubbing his eyes to keep the sleep out of them as he waits for a reply, wondering if he’ll get one at all, for that matter. He doesn’t have to wait for long, though, because his phone vibrates almost immediately.

_What did he say?_

It’s just like Yugyeom to say that, to be honest. No explanations needed, no hovering uncertainty, like he _knows_ the effects that meeting Youngjae might have on Kunpimook, and he doesn’t think he can ever be more grateful. Especially considering that this is the first time they’ve spoken after that night at the hotel.

_i can’t tell jaebum or Jackson anything, etc._

_Anything else?_

_dunno. maybe._

He waits expectantly, and as predicted, his phone vibrates with a call moments later.

“How was it?” Yugyeom’s voice is soft, comforting, at this hour, and Kunpimook drinks the sound of it down like a man lost in the desert. He wonders when he’d become so dependent on the younger man, when he’d needed to hear to sound of his voice to ground himself, delude himself into thinking everything would be okay.

“I get it,” Kunpimook says into the receiver, half his face in the pillow. He takes a deep, shuddering breath. “I understand him. I understand you, me, everyone.”

Then, “I hate it.”

Yugyeom lets out a sigh that rustles over the phone like a blanket, one that seems to envelop Kunpimook like one of his embraces, despite the distance. He understands the younger man doesn’t convey his concern through words or promises- he does it through actions, through sacrifices, and this makes itself clear when he speaks next.

“Do you need me to come over?”

It’s a simple phrase, but it means the world to Kunpimook, and he pulls a watery smile though he knows Yugyeom can’t see it.

“That’d-…that’d be nice.”

The knock comes on his door fifteen minutes later, and Kunpimook opens it, a little relieved, mostly embarrassed, but the way Yugyeom wraps his arms around him in a literally breathtaking hug, warm hands coming to smooth down the nape of his neck and between his shoulder blades, makes every regret fade instantly.

*

He dreams of home for the first time in the five years since he’d left to study overseas that night, arms and legs tangled with Yugyeom’s on his bed. He’s walking down a street, in a ratty old t-shirt and a pair of jeans, the heat and the smells and the sounds all back in full force but muffled. He realises some time later it sounds like a loop, repeating the experience of walking until he’s lost in wretched, disgusting familiarity.

Kunpimook doesn’t know when, but he ends up at his own school, a pretty, pristine little building beside a gorgeous park and a huge shopping mall, only attended by the offspring of the influential and filthily affluent. He manages to dream up the playground, too, with its expensive mini tarmac for the kids to drive the motorised little cars around during recess, and the imported trees planted around too, specially brought in for teachers to teach students about nature and science.

He’s suddenly cramped into the tiny desk in the classroom in a blur of movement that passes in the blink of an eye, legs drawn up to his chest, watching the teacher ask everyone what they want to be when they grow up.

“I want to be a lawyer!” a boy near the front suddenly shouts out, voice startlingly clear despite the general haze that surrounds everything else, his hand confidently in the air. “My big brother’s going to be one too!”

“ _I_ want to be a doctor, just like my daddy,” a girl in the centre of the classroom preens. “And earn lots of money just like him.”

“My mommy’s an _actress_ ,” a boy at the corner of the classroom challenges.

“ _My_ dad’s a diplomat.”

“My daddy runs the biggest business in the country!”

“What about you, Kunpimook?” the teacher asks kindly, and 22-year-old Kunpimook feels oddly compelled to answer. He can’t, though, because the boy on his left cuts in.

“ _His_ daddy drives mine to work every day!” he volunteers the information.

“His mommy makes sure _my_ mommy looks good for every com-mer-shal,” the son of the actress says proudly. “ _He’s_ only here because my mommy helped him get in.”

“His daddy thanked me when I tipped him yesterday!”

“His mommy cuts my hair every week! She always cuts it weird, she’ll never get it right!”

And everyone in the classroom laughs, the teacher especially, before she carefully guides the topic back to careers and how important considering your future one is.

And Kunpimook lets his eyes sweep across the classroom of stupidly rich children, like the moment he’d been seven, sitting in this same classroom back in Thailand, and had found a certain solace in disassembling each and every one of their spoilt, sorry minds, an escape from the constant choking anger that he’d been forced to swallow for ten years, until the day he learned that he could take them apart in a way that just might benefit himself along the way.

Unfortunately, like every other time he’s dreamt of this, he wakes up before he can get to that, and the bitter, bottled taste of silent fury that’d been tattooed into him since his childhood stays burning at the back of his mouth, tightening his throat till it feels like he’s choking, unable to breathe. He’s writhing, almost, squeezing embarrassingly hot tears out the corner of his eyes, fists clenched and muscles tensed in an uncontrollable, helpless anger.

That is, apparently, until the arms wrapped loosely around his waist start into motion, the owner of them having been awoken by his movements, and a hand reaches to drowsily rub smooth rhythms along his back, repetitive and soothing.

And for the first time in Kunpimook Bhuwakul’s life that night, something manages to lull the ache of injustice that blocks out his airways and his veins slowly to nothing but a dull, numb throb. Something that feels a lot like reassurance and security (but which might not be, because he hasn’t felt that since he was three and has long forgotten the cool relief it had once brought to his soul) ebbs in, painless and faint, like the embrace of an infant, and it resounds in a soft lullaby that fills his heart from the inside out. For once the wound feels like a scar, rather than an infection, his breathing calming itself down, and it’s finally enough for him to drift gradually back into a now dreamless sleep, his nightmares put to rest.

(Temporarily, of course, but if he’s to be honest (and he rarely is), that’s infinitely more than he could ever ask for.)

*

“It’s wonderful that you’ve finally come to visit,” Jinyoung smiles radiantly as he leads Kunpimook through the hallway of the three-storey bungalow from the front door. “Jackson and Mark-hyung should be over soon, and Jaebum-hyung’s coming back from work any moment now, too. Can we have the drinks over now?” he says, aside, and the staff standing not too far away drifts away to the bar, so Jinyoung turns back to Kunpimook with an apologetic expression, “I’m sorry if I sounded a little too excited over the phone, the dinner won’t be for another hour, at least. Unless you’re already hungry?”

Kunpimook shakes his head politely, feeling a little oppressed, if he’s to be honest. Jackson had forwarded him a message from Jinyoung, casually inviting him for some high-end dinner over at their place (their _entertainment venue_ , Yugyeom would correct him, because Jaebum and Jinyoung had many properties and actually properly lived in a stylish studio apartment nearer the business district) and Jinyoung had called a few minutes later, earnestly asking him to come. It’s a little odd, being the only one under Jinyoung’s rapid-fire line of attention (for these few minutes until Jaebum apparently comes, at least), but he guesses he’ll have to get used to it.

“Of course, Yugyeom will be here too,” Jinyoung takes a sleek remote from the coffee table and presses a button, and the television comes to life as the maid glides silently over with the tray of wineglasses. The thought of Yugyeom being here calms Kunpimook inexplicably, as he takes a sip from the flute that’d been offered to him, the sound of some local drama on television playing over the silence.

It’s been a few days since the night Yugyeom had come over, and to Kunpimook’s relief, the other man hasn’t brought it up once. They’d gone back to the mellow, safe relationship they’d worked so hard to establish, except Kunpimook knows something’s different, something innate and set so deep within the two of them he can’t even begin to decipher it.

(But then again, it’s not that he’d dare to try even if he could.)

Just then, on the coffee table, Jinyoung’s phone, the latest model in the Samsung series, or something, buzzes, a call flashing on the screen, and he reaches for it eagerly. “Oh, that’ll be Jaebum-hyung!”

Kunpimook purposefully looks away to give him privacy, taking another drink from his glass, as Jinyoung almost skips back into the hallway, a spring in his step. Every meeting just makes it more obvious- the way Jinyoung seems to have this obsessive need to have Jaebum in his sights all the time, like he’s afraid the older man might slip away if he doesn’t drag him back first. Of course, those worries aren’t unfounded, and Kunpimook feels guiltier than ever that he’s got a part to play in that.

Jinyoung, however, comes back a few minutes later, looking a little deflated, regarding his phone with an uneasy frown. Kunpimook pretends not to notice the dire state of his emotions as the other man takes a seat on the neighbouring sofa, still absorbed in his phone.

“Where _is_ he,” he hears the older man mutter under his breath, barely audible over the sound of the television, and _there it is,_ Kunpimook’s feeling another twist of guilt and a little pity.

“Bambam-ah,” Jinyoung begins hesitantly, after a while, and Kunpimook turns obligingly to him, immediately apprehensive at the look in his eyes. “I-…I feel a little embarrassed asking you about this, but you have to understand I’ve no other way,” he looks so genuinely pained for a moment, lips bitten red with worry and eyes darting in shame, that Kunpimook almost feels obliged to at least confirm his worries. “Have you-….have you noticed anything, uhm, _strange_ , about Jaebum-hyung, lately?”

The sincerity in his tone makes Kunpimook stumble a little, scrabble to pull back on the strings of this elaborate mask he’s wearing, but he manages, eventually, only the thought of what Jaebum might do to him (and Yugyeom) if he spilled the slightest amount of information keeping him silent.

“No,” Kunpimook says honestly, a little puzzled, taking a sip from his glass to cover up, and guilt weighs heavy in his gut at the broken look in Jinyoung’s eyes. “What do you mean by strange?”

“Oh, never mind, then, it’s alright,” Jinyoung says hastily, gaze returning to the carpet, as he gets up, returning worriedly to his phone. “Drink up,” he waves a careless hand, mind obviously occupied by other things.

Kunpimook sinks back into the sofa, feeling worse than ever, for some reason, apprehension twisting in his gut in a way that’s so bad the numbing pain is almost physical. He tries to focus on the drama, but can’t- the people seem to go out of focus as he listens to the sound of Jinyoung pacing, trying to contact Jaebum again.

It’s weird, he can almost hear the sound of the dial tone as Jaebum ignores Jinyoung’s calls, but he can’t make out what the main lead of the drama is saying. _Snap out of it._ He presses a finger to his temple, alarmed when he finds the digits are trembling, weak, against his skin. He tries to get up, or straighten, even, but it’s like his body’s going into a heavy sleep.

But then the wineglass in his hand slips, like the other shoe’s finally dropped, spilling the last dregs of alcohol on the sofa and hitting the deep rug with a soft _thunk_.

_Oh._

“I’m at a loss,” Jinyoung’s saying, but the voice sounds distant and cold, and Kunpimook has to struggle to comprehend even that sentence. It’s like everything’s slowed down, and he’s fallen into a dream, almost, unable to remember or decide on anything. He feels defenceless in a way that both unconsciously grates on him and lulls him into a blithe, clueless stupor at the same time, like all logic and reasoning’s dissolving to mush in his mind. “I can’t do this anymore.”

_Can’t do what? What’s making him so agitated?_

Jinyoung’s face appears in front of him, eyes wide and worried in a way that Kunpimook would be able to see through straight away if he weren’t in this state. “You’ll help me, Bambam-ah? Won’t you?”

_Help him what? What does he want again?_

“You have to _tell me_ ,” Jinyoung starts to enunciate everything clearly, voice changing, even in the blurred state of Kunpimook’s consciousness, to one sharper and more decisive. “ _Everything,_ ” he curves a soft hand against the side of the younger man’s face, tugging his chin up at an excruciatingly slow pace. “That happened that night,” there’s a frightening quality about the way he speaks, Kunpimook thinks, that promises worlds of pain in the same way it allures people into an illusion of magic about him. “At the party, alright?”

_The party…_

Kunpimook feels, even in the dazed state of mind he’s in now, like there’s something he can’t talk about during that night, something he can’t put his finger on, but the way Jinyoung’s looking at him spurs him to want to just spill everything, do whatever Jinyoung wants him to do, so he can escape the jagged cruelty in that voice, escape the possibility of the suffering it holds in store.

The essence of Kunpimook Bhuwakul has been reduced to nothing but a primal, childlike fear, and it’s this fear that pulls the stopper on his lips, that lets the words spill forth in a bumbling, but overall steady stream, till Jinyoung’s sucked every last thing he wants to know from him. The process seems to stretch an eternity, torturous and terrifying, and Kunpimook feels an odd mix of relief and shame when Jinyoung lets up, satisfied, when the younger man’s been rendered safely useless once more.

Jinyoung’s movements are increasingly blurry, but Kunpimook manages to register a slender set of fingers delicately prying his mouth open, the click of glass from a bottle against his upper jaw, dripping a bitter liquid onto his tongue that immediately feels like it’s muffling him, incapacitating his senses one by one, and finally, shivering and numb, Kunpimook loses himself to a comforting, drug-induced darkness.  



	6. symmetrophobic

 

The sky is greying, covered in streaks of orange, when Kunpimook slides back into consciousness.

He spends what feels like hours in the stiff morning air, shivering in his work blazer, blinking slowly, stomach twisting in a slow panic, working blood back to his hands and feet one by one. He realises he’s on a bench, in what looks like a park that he can’t recognise, head leaning uncomfortably against the backrest of it. Several men and women, and once, an entire family, pass him by, all wrapped up in jackets and probably wondering why someone like him would be taking a nap out in the cold, before moving right along.

Kunpimook finally manages to work a hand into his blazer, fingers fumbling for his phone, which, thankfully, is still there, and he unlocks the screen with trembling fingers, before calling the one and only person he can think of at this moment.

“Yugyeom?” he croaks into the receiver once the younger man picks up on the third ring.

“Hey, what happened last night?” Yugyeom’s voice is worried, but he jumps right into the call, like he’d been waiting for it. “Jinyoung said you couldn’t make it- I tried to call, but I couldn’t get through. What happened?”

“Y-yugyeom,” Kunpimook can’t say a word without it shivering violently as it leaves his lips. “C-can you come and g-get me?”

“Where are you?” Yugyeom’s words are slower, now, voice raising slightly. “Aren’t you at work?”

“I d-don’t know,” the older man confesses, looking around the strange park for a sign, or something. “It’s r-really c-cold.”

“Where _are you_?” there’s the sound of paper rustling, a pen being clicked shut. “Are you outside? What do you see?”

“I’m in a p-park,” Kunpimook finally catches the inscription on a wooden board some distance away. “Naksan Park.”

“Hang on, I’m coming to get you,” he hears the sound of a door closing, now, the quiet mutter of _I need to get something_ to someone. “Can you get indoors? It should be freezing cold out there, shouldn’t it?”

“I d-don’t think I can s-stand yet,” Kunpimook tests his legs- they flop uselessly against the side of the bench. He hears the sound of Yugyeom swear over the phone, the sound low and threatening.

“What _happened_?” he hisses, and there’s the sound of a car door slamming, an engine revving to life. “What do you mean you _can’t stand_?”

Kunpimook squeezes his eyes shut, chest tightening unbearably at the tainted frustration welling up inside him. He drags himself back into the memory of last night, determined to remember even if it kills him, and gradually he recalls the sweet taste of wine, the sickening feel of artificial guilt, and finally, most vividly, the sound of shattered glass, recycled in someone’s voice box.

“I can’t-t remember, I think-…” he grits out, teeth chattering, and something burns at the edges of his eyes, sliding down his frozen face in shameful, watery tracks. “Jinyoung, he d-did something to me, I t-think he drugged me.”

_I should’ve known. I should’ve seen it coming when he invited me earlier, should’ve seen it when he offered me drinks, should’ve known with the way he was talking about Jaebum._

There’s silence, for a while, over the receiver. Then:

“I’m a few minutes out. Stay on the line with me.”

Twenty minutes later, Kunpimook stumbles into his apartment, wrapped up in Yugyeom’s thick outer jacket, nose running and still shivering. Yugyeom guides him gently to his bathroom, steadying him when his legs wobble dangerously, still recovering from the influence of the medication.

The cold washes away under the hot stream from the shower head, but the dirty feeling of being _used_ like that stays saturated in his skin, caked under his nails, though he scrubs until his skin is covered in red lines, till pain rakes up his body from the spray of the burning water. He washes out his mouth, over and over again, as if that’ll make him forget he’d ever willingly drank down alcohol laced with drugs, trying and failing to rid himself of that disgusting sensation of helplessness and fear, but the essence of it remains like a stubborn stain, even after he gets out of the shower and curls up on the sofa, knees drawn to his chest, dressed in the warmest thing he can find in his closet.

“What did he want?” it’s Yugyeom, setting a cup of sweet and hot in front of him as he sits next to him on the couch.

“What else?” Kunpimook says shortly, not looking at the cup- he doesn’t think he can accept drinks from anyone for some time, not even from Yugyeom. He’d remembered more of last night as he’d been showering, remembered the guilt and the urgency that Jinyoung had so easily invoked in him, under the influence of the drug, to make him spill everything. “He wanted to know what was up with Jaebum.”

“What did you tell him?” Yugyeom’s voice is softer, and even through the thick layer of fabric Kunpimook’s wearing, he can feel the arm around his shoulder. He buries his face in the cotton of Yugyeom’s sweater, letting out a choked sob at the repulsive thought of it.

“ _Everything_ ,” Kunpimook concentrates all the anger and despair in that one word, shoulders shaking. “I told him _everything_ , Yugyeom.”

The arm around his shoulder doesn’t let up in the slightest, nor the soothing pattern that’s being rubbed into his back, and the tendrils of a certain warmth inexplicably begins to spread from the side Yugyeom’s sitting on to the rest of his body.

“I don’t know what he’s going to do,” Kunpimook slumps against the younger man’s body, trembling at the thought of the _violation_ that’d just taken place, and the repercussions he would now have to face. “But he _knows_ , and he’s going to do something, and it’s going to be-…”

“ _No_ , don’t say it,” it sounds like every word is sending knives into Yugyeom’s throat, possibly at the thought of Jinyoung doing something like this. “It’s _not_ going to be your fault, you didn’t _ask_ to be drugged and questioned.”

“But I should’ve _known_ ,” Kunpimook wails into his shoulder, tears staining damp spots into Yugyeom’s blue sweater. “I should’ve _known_ , I shouldn’t have let him do this to me, I can’t believe he _got to me_.”

“It’s _not your fault_ ,” Yugyeom emphasises firmly. “You’re not doing this now, Kunpimook-ah, it’s not your fault-…it’s _them_ ,” he exhales in frustration. "They’re-they’re _sick_ people, okay, Jinyoung-…he _planned this_ ,” he grits it out, like the thought of it is hard to swallow, let alone say out loud. “It’s the reason why he pushed us together during that night at the party and sent us to find hyung- he _knew_ Jaebum-hyung’s lover would be visiting that night, and he wanted us to find him,” the arm around him tightens a little, almost unconsciously, as though in guilt. “And he knew he couldn’t do it to me because I’d tell Jaebum-hyung right away if he did, so-…”

“So it was me, then,” Kunpimook’s voice is a little dead, like he’s long accepted the idea of being pushed around a chessboard like a worthless pawn, tossed without second thought into the line of fire to save the king and queen, no matter how detestable they may be.

He doesn’t know what to feel, doesn’t know what to think- the part of him that’s disgusted with himself fights with the part of him that’s disgusted by Jinyoung, which is already in conflict with the part of him that’s disgusted with Jaebum, and it all links in a messy web of blame and anger that dumps the fault right back onto himself.

The delusion of immortality’s finally been shattered- the ridiculous high he’d once felt at the complete control and power over the circumstances feels like it’s been snatched from him and snapped in half. He’d spent his life outsmarting the system, but then he’d let his guard down for one moment and walked straight into one of its many deadly, glamorised traps. Now he’s tainted, implicated in the confusing web of blame that by right, only those with all the money in the world can face and survive.

He feels sobered, pained, and so very _dirty_ it makes him sick just to think of it.

“You should go to bed,” the circular motion of his thoughts are disrupted, then, by Yugyeom, tugging gently on his arm, and Kunpimook obliges listlessly, getting up off the couch to move, until the younger man wraps him in a sudden hug, pulling him close.

Yugyeom’s eyes are wide with an unadulterated worry he’s never seen before when they part, a soft palm coming to cup Kunpimook’s cheek, nudging him gently to look the other man in the eye. “It’s not your fault- stop thinking like that. I know there doesn’t seem to be anyone to blame but that doesn’t mean you should push it all on yourself, you’ll just shut down if you do that,” the words sound so personal, so earnest, like the words are pouring from Yugyeom’s heart, almost. “Promise me you’ll stop thinking like that, _please_.”

Kunpimook realises he’s expecting a reply, and looks down, giving one shameful, silent nod. It’s a little odd, he thinks, as Yugyeom walks with him to his bedroom, how the younger man knows what he’s feeling so well, and though on any other occasion he would just attribute it as usual to his exceptional perceptiveness, something tells him there’s another reason for it.

“Did any of them-…” Kunpimook blurts out all of a sudden, as Yugyeom’s pulling the covers over him in bed, and the other man looks over questioningly. It’s strange, how he feels the need to be careful with his words now, when he’d been so brazen with whatever he’d said in the past. “Did any of them ever-…?”

A light goes out behind Yugyeom’s eyes for a moment, but it’s back on so fast Kunpimook barely catches it. He chuckles, continuing to tuck him in.

“Yeah,” he says casually, smoothing a lock of hair away from the other man’s face. “Mark.”

“ _Mark_?” Kunpimook’s eyes widen in shock. That sinks something new in him- he’d always seen the oldest of the four as the most detached from any of their illicit activities- the man focused on his business, calm and reclusive, only connected to any them through Jackson. “What did he do?”

“Don’t remember,” Yugyeom shrugs, and it’s a testament to how much that event must have shaken him, because even in Kunpimook’s current state he can tell right away that the other man’s lying through his teeth.

“Didn’t you tell Jaebum after that?” Kunpimook says, the faintest hint of urgency in his voice. “Wouldn’t he have had to know? You’re his _cousin,_ he can’t just _ignore_ this.”

“Of course I told him,” the younger man laughs bitterly. “I was nineteen and an idiot,” he straightens, seemingly indifferent, but Kunpimook knows better. “He didn’t care.”

The ache of solitary despair that had knotted itself into Kunpimook’s chest seems to loosen unconsciously, then, replaced by a sort of righteous fury, that a boy barely out of his teens would have to be subjected to a thing like this, then be rejected by the only person he could ever rely on for help in this stupid, twisted world, and forced to suffer in silence.

He wonders how on earth Yugyeom had ever survived something like that.

“Just-…just don’t think about it, it’ll make you crazy,” Yugyeom says again, like he’d read his mind, repeating himself like it’s a mantra he’s fixed into his own mind. “Promise me you won’t-…”

Kunpimook doesn’t let him finish- he struggles up in a spur of the moment decision, messing whatever Yugyeom’s done to his blankets, before he pulls the other man down with an insistent tug to his sweater, pressing their lips together in a messy, aggressively affectionate kiss, his arms winding around Yugyeom’s back almost pleadingly, as if afraid to let go, lest he dissolve and change, like every other constant Kunpimook’s once known in his life.

It takes about half a second for Yugyeom’s lips to start into motion against his, strong fingers cradling the back of Kunpimook’s head, pressing him impossibly closer, and his hands tilt the other man at an angle to open him up, their lips fitting perfectly together.

It frightens him, how they click in tandem so much more quickly than the last time, the progressions of their kisses a juxtaposition to the detached, gradual nature of their relationship. It’s risky and exhilarating, thoughtless and irrational, little quirks to Kunpimook that have stayed stubbornly ingrained in him despite the business he’s in, and it _hurts_ , almost, the discharge of emotions that burst through the dams of his heart in their ecstasy at finally being free.

Kunpimook is the one to break the kiss, wondering if he’ll feel this breathless every time he does this and deciding that he won’t mind if he does.

“I don’t know how to-…to say this,” he stutters between heated breaths, cheeks suddenly burning at the haze in Yugyeom’s dark eyes, the desire burning so strongly which he’s sure is mirrored in his own eyes. “But thank you. For everything.”

Yugyeom moves forward suddenly, and for a moment Kunpimook thinks he’s asking for another kiss until he feels the arms around his back, pulling him into a breathtaking embrace that spreads a warmth from his chest to the tips of his toes, dizzyingly familiar and affectionate, and he leans into the younger man’s shoulder, relishing in the security only he can provide.

“No,’ he can barely hear the words, murmured against his skin with a sort of reverence that, for a moment, makes him forget that they’re the paupers in a society of indulgence, makes him feel like he’s priceless, and will stay that way forever. “Thank _you._ ”

And Kunpimook understands, he finally understands because he can feel the ghosts of tentative, lonely fear that’d once existed in the man whose arms are now around him, can feel the muffled agony and confusion and anger of unspeakable years past. So he wraps his arms around him as well, hoping he’s soothing him as effectively as Yugyeom has done for him, trying to reach out with his soul to exhume those pained spirits, so he can free their master at long last.

(And if veil after veil over the world are thrown off to reveal the shambles he knows it’s in now, Yugyeom’s heart is in his hands, and his in the younger man’s, and he confesses that’s all he can bring himself to care about now.)

*

Choi Youngjae’s body is discovered hanging from the ceiling fan of his tiny apartment barely a week later.

It’s found by the landlady, who’d gone in three days after his rent was due and she’d been unable to contact him. She kicks up a ruckus- she’d been planning to sell the flat, and reports of death here would just bring the price of the property down.

The police, on the other hand, label it a suicide automatically, closing the case neat and tidy, moving on seamlessly to the next case in line, and just like that, Choi Youngjae fades- becomes just another statistic in black and white on a printed sheet of paper.

(For if any of the police had happened to see the evidence of forced entry past the flimsy door, the chairs and magazines upturned in a scuffle, or the obvious laceration marks of restraint around Youngjae’s slender wrists, they apparently hadn’t said a word.

AQ Corporation does, after all, regularly donate hefty sums to the works of the civil service.)

The media dubs it the _lonely end_ , one of the many that young men and women, lost in the endless drivel of city life, succumb to, dying alone and crushed and meaningless. The tiny section in the newspaper dedicated to it opens his funeral, because they haven’t been able to contact any relatives or close friends of his.

It’s an unspoken thing between Kunpimook and Yugyeom, that both of them know deep down somewhere about the true cause for Youngjae’s death, but like the secrets of every one of those rich lovers who’d once fawned for his love, that truth dies with the man. It’s no surprise that the two of them are part of the sparse handful that turn up, and as the older of the two bows to pay his respects, something burns him from the inside out, knowing it’s his fault things ended up this way.

(The fingers that intertwine themselves with his afterwards try to convince him otherwise, though.)

It’s ironic, almost. The whole thing is a quiet, sorry sort of affair, unlike the fast-paced, glamorous outlook that Kunpimook had once associated with Youngjae’s life. No friends, no family to visit, only the ghosts of wealthy lovers past, as materialistic and useless at his death as the multitude of gifts bestowed upon him when he’d been alive.

*

Kunpimook lies awake for hours that night. He thinks about life, thinks about the whole state of things, even though Yugyeom had told him not to.

He digs up memories as he’s drifting into an uneasy sleep, all the way back to when he was ten and his mother would bring back prettily printed and enclosed complimentary tickets to plays, high teas, or movie premieres, all _by courtesy of_ some celebrity or another. He remembers turning the flimsy, sparkling things over in his little fingers, a little apprehensive and a little enamoured, and his mother would get down on one knee in front of her youngest son, smiling with a serene sort of excitement, like she’d discovered the secret behind a magic trick. She’d tell Kunpimook, softly and slowly, that while money and diamonds and cars were the currency of the world, nothing was more valuable than secrets, especially those of the rich and famous.

Secrets that were gossiped or complained about as aforementioned rich and famous were getting their hair done, for example, or mumbled about as they were being driven home drunk in the backseat of a chauffeured car.

Those murmurs had stayed with him, infected his mind, he realises then, and had grown with that ten-year-old boy into a tumour, of sorts, malicious and ravenous, until it possessed him completely, the notion of taking what he could from those so unfairly blessed with so much more. The memories of his life after that come as a series of flashes, glitzy, hasty comic book panels that flip much too fast for Kunpimook to remember properly.

He’s ten when he leaves his old friends to start hanging out with a few of the richer kids in school, a couple of snobbish boys whose names he can’t remember, and a girl who’d later stopped school to follow in her mother’s footsteps to become an actress.

He’s just turned eleven when he swaps his school bag for a branded one that costs about six times his old one, a _little birthday gift_ from the girl. A few months into that, a brand new MP3’s added to the pile, then a Gameboy, an iPhone, then hundreds of different electronic toys and gadgets, according to the current season or trend. He’s fourteen when he gets invited to his friend’s private yacht for a birthday party, then a private plane, and scattered in between are VIP tickets to movie premieres, concerts, and stacks upon stacks of branded clothes and caps.

Then Kunpimook’s sixteen, sixteen and standing in front of his parents with an acceptance letter overseas he’d almost killed himself studying to get, because the hunger could no longer be satisfied by whatever the measly affluent of his country could provide. He’d wanted _more_ , and he was convinced that this was the only way he could get it.

He remembers, with a jolt of pain, convincing himself, then, that it isn’t sadness, or guilt, in fact, that he sees in his parents’ eyes when he leaves the house, hoping it’s finally for good.

It’s the lifestyle and the desire for it that infects people like poison, to the point they crave it like a drug, that they deceive and lose themselves and do whatever it takes to cling to it. The essence of it, the spring of ironic decay and immorality that conceals itself under glittering cars and credit cards, spreads from people like Jaebum to people like Jinyoung, to Yugyeom, and Youngjae, to the point of his death, and now Kunpimook realises that he too, is well and truly contaminated.

Something settles itself in the heart of Kunpimook Bhuwakul heart that night, something heavy and conflicting that he pushes aside the moment he feels it because he’s only ever seen the manifestation of it twice in his life- once in his parents’ eyes, the morning he left, stiff and unannounced, begging him to change his mind, and the second in Yugyeom’s, that afternoon he’d brought him home from the park, as he’d pleaded for him to stop thinking about it. Something wedges itself firmly there, like a crowbar, prying off one layer of deadened flesh after another to reach its core, where it breaks the raw, weak essence of himself, snaps it cleanly in half, demanding that he fix it himself, fashion it into a genuine image of himself, rather than the identity he’s paid to take.

But he can’t. He’d long given up that privilege the day he accepted those toys and bags and parties, the day Jackson walked into his life and he’d chased him down like his life depended on it, to sink his claws into his best chance for success.

(Or maybe he’s gotten so good at lying he can’t tell when he’s talking to himself, too.)

*

“Inflation’s going crazy. I haven’t seen a stable reading in weeks.”

Kunpimook puts a piece of whatever he’s eating now, that Jackson had ordered for him (the other man asks for two of whatever he’s getting automatically, now), into his mouth, chewing numbly, listening to sound of Mark speaking, voice clean and crisp over the ballads playing in the background. It’s a little odd, hearing him speak so much, mostly because Jaebum’s oddly subdued today- still talking, of course, but less so (no prizes for guessing why). Jackson too, but understandably- the media had questioned the Wang Corporation on the suicide and the name of his company had come under fire for alleged mistreatment of employees, but only for a few days, before the issue died a quiet death. Youngjae was too much of a nobody to kick up such a great fuss over.

“It’ll all be fine after a while, won’t it?” Jinyoung, on the other hand, is bright as anything, almost glued to Jaebum today, all content smiles and laughter. “It always ends up okay.”

“You’ve been reading those stupid fiction love novels again,” Jackson scoffs a little too loudly, pressing a napkin into the edge of his mouth. (That’s inaccurate, by the way, because Yugyeom had told Kunpimook of Jinyoung’s extensive collection of hardback English classic literature books, which sort of makes sense once you know what he’s really like) Kunpimook drifts in and out of the conversation, never paying much attention. They don’t feel the obligation to actively involve him anymore, like he’s become as much of a constant, a piece of the background, as Yugyeom has. “All that romantic, idealistic crap’s gotten into your head.”

Besides, his food is much too putrid today to even try to fake a smile- Kunpimook legitimately feels faint, if he’s to be honest. He’s this close to thinking about ordering something different from Jackson’s choice next time around, ( _if_ there’s a next time around, but he shoves that thought away) and takes a sip of water from his glass to choke it down.

It helps, though, that he can barely taste his food, not with the disgusting normalcy of this meal in comparison to the extent of the ghastly secrets he’s uncovered at this table- Jinyoung turns to him at one point, smiling brightly, eyes devoid of any recognition to the fact that he’d drugged and forced information out of him just over a fortnight ago, as if he’d already forgotten, moved on. Jaebum orders everyone around, as usual, with a darker, more annoyed demeanour today, and Jinyoung asks Jackson one question about _the scandal_ (that’s what he has the audacity to call it, now) and how he’s coping, and that’s it.

Kunpimook wonders if he should feel disgusted, but honestly, he just feels breathless, and kind of tired.

Really, _really_ tired.

“Spring fashion’s ridiculous this year,” Jinyoung declares, taking a sip from his glass of Chardonnay. “Have you seen what Gucci’s been walking up and down the runways? The models are so ugly, too, I wonder what happened to the winter ones. Don’t you agree, Bambam-ah?”

“Sure,” Kunpimook replies noncommittally, and Jinyoung turns away, satisfied. Across the table, Yugyeom hasn’t taken his eyes off his food once throughout this whole meal, but his food’s barely been touched either.

 _This tastes like shit,_ Kunpimook thinks, as Jackson starts talking about a news flash that’d been on television a couple of days ago. He’s getting a real headache now, and he can feel a thin sheen of sweat when he rubs a hand across his forehead, which is weird, because _he’s_ the one who’d grown up in a tropical climate and survived- why would he be perspiring in this temperature?

“Such a tragedy,” Jinyoung tuts, but Kunpimook doesn’t know what he’s talking about. His head feels unmistakeably heavy, like it would loll over and hit the edge of the table anytime soon, but light at the same time, like he’s unable to think. And is there something wrong with the air-conditioning or is it just him, because why else would he feel so nauseated?

“If those idiots would just drive properly, maybe they wouldn’t get themselves into stupid accidents like these,” Jackson interjects. Every word drops like iron weights into Kunpimook’s already spinning mind- he’s considering excusing himself to go to the bathroom now, even. He wonders if it’s the terrible food or the terrible company. Maybe it’s both.

“Wish they’d stop making such a big deal out of it,” Mark comments leisurely, taking another bite of his food. “We understand people died and everything, but there are other important things on the news, you know. Did you realise they cut the stocks section by three minutes last night to put in that special report?”

“I can’t believe they broke protocol for such a trivial little thing. Can you, hyung?”

“Besides, it’s not like their families _appreciate_ all this unwanted attention, right?”

The knife slips from Kunpimook’s hand, hitting his plate with an unnecessarily loud _clink_. Jinyoung keeps right on talking, but he feels Jackson’s stare suddenly on the side of his face, slightly disconcerted.

“Kid, you okay?” he’s speaking in English, now, voice low, and Kunpimook nods numbly, hoping to ward off his attention.

He looks up across the table, ignoring the pain that bolts through his head when he does that, catching Yugyeom’s eye. The younger man’s looking at him for the first time during that meal, brows furrowed in unreadable emotion, but they light up in a horrified kind of realisation once their eyes meet, his gaze flicking from Kunpimook’s plate to the man himself.

 _Oh_.

Something drops low and heavy in his stomach when he realises what’s going on. He knows he needs to get to the bathroom immediately, throw everything back up before it gets worse, but his limbs are starting to feel like lead’s been pumped into them, sluggish and weak.

The general dizziness is getting worse, so he has to force himself to push back his chair, even if it’s only by an inch, attempting to stand. He looks back across the table, going generally unnoticed by everyone except Yugyeom, sending a silent plea for help because all of a sudden he doesn’t think he can stand.

His head’s starting to spin a little but he can see Yugyeom excusing himself quietly as Mark continues to talk about stocks and money and other stupid things, and relief starts to pour in but that all stops short when he sees Jaebum’s hand close around Yugyeom’s wrist, tugging him purposefully back into his chair.

The younger man looks confused, trying to quietly explain his way out of it but Jaebum seems to be perfectly aware, because he turns to face Kunpimook for a moment, and the edge of his lips turns up in a graciously cruel smile.

Kunpimook’s starting to have difficulty breathing, eyes widening in realisation about what’s going on, and out of the corner of his eye Yugyeom tries to get up again but Jaebum’s eyes snap to the younger man, forceful and commanding, ordering him to _sit_.

“Something wrong, Bambam?” Jinyoung’s eyes are almost comically wide when he _finally_ notices something up with the shallow breaths Kunpimook’s taking, the stiff, pained way he’s sitting. “You look a little off,” he turns to the rest of them, talking in that same, light tone, as if discussing the weather. “Don’t you all think he looks a little off?”

Kunpimook coughs, once, twice, but every time it feels like his lungs can’t draw enough air, like his body’s turning to stone in the chair he’s in now.

“You choking on something?” Jackson asks from his left. “Hey, you’re turning _red_ , are you okay?”

He pushes off from the table, arms screaming with a silent, aching fatigue even at that movement, trying to get up from the chair, but his legs give out the moment he tries to stand, and he stumbles, catching the edge of the table with a shaky hand.

Another pleading glance across the table enlightens him to the sight of Jaebum keeping a physical hand on Yugyeom’s shoulder, holding him down, and for a moment he thinks _that’s it_ , he’s done for, because Yugyeom’s his only chance and as long as Jaebum’s around, he can’t do a thing. But then-…

“Call an ambulance!” Yugyeom bursts out desperately, at such a volume the whole restaurant goes silent, the loudest Kunpimook thinks he’s ever heard him speak at all, pointing across the table despite the venomous look Jaebum’s shooting him. “It’s _poison_! He’s been _poisoned_!”

The _P_ word has its effect, though not as either of them would have liked- a woman screams from the corner of the restaurant, and immediately the entire room breaks into chaos, everyone getting up and away from their food as though it might come alive and attack them. Someone starts to run, and this translates into a stampede out of restaurant, for what reason, Kunpimook has no idea, because he highly doubts that their food, poisoned or not, can get up and chase after them.

In his position, half collapsed on the floor, at least three people brush past him none-too-gently in their redundant attempts to get out from the restaurant, and one accidentally kicks the chair supporting him backwards on the ground, and he crumples with it.

The world’s nothing but a blurry mess of loafers and high heels, some digging sharp edges into his legs and arms, but all he can think about right now is how hard it is to breathe, like someone’s sitting on his chest, an iron cage closing around his lungs. He’s turning over slightly in pain, and through his swimming vision he makes out panicked faces, all rushing by, until one figure comes into startlingly close view. Amidst the kicks and sharp pains, then, he feels someone shove an arm under his back, achingly familiar, capable arms supporting him into a sitting position, cradling him to his chest, he realises, away from the rush of feet.

Slowly, then, Kunpimook manages to blink Yugyeom’s face into focus, and watches, dazed, as the other man shouts words he can’t comprehend in this state down his phone. There’s a sickness he feels that he knows has nothing to do with the toxins in his bloodstream and everything to do with the people around them, all the poisonous men and women in this tier of society, whom he’d once assumed he could feed off due to their incongruence, before he realised that it was really the other way around, and that _he_ was the one being drained and used.

So he focuses, instead, on the face of the man holding him, clings on to the last dregs of security it can bring him, reassured when it’s the last thing he sees, before he slides into a now disturbingly common, unnatural darkness, hoping that this time, it’s for good.  
  
*  
  
Everything smells a painful, dreary sort of sterile when Kunpimook wakes up, but at the same time it’s strangely calming. He knows he’s in a hospital at once, because you never quite forget the smell of a hospital, and you don’t see people lying or trying to smoke someone when it involves their deathbed. So maybe it’s sort of a guarantee of his survival, because another lie might just make him finish the job of poisoning himself.

He feels immune, in a sad, defeated kind of way.

Kunpimook spends what feels like hours staring up at the ceiling, memorising the patterns that the shadows make on the pale surface, not moving his head because he’s afraid of what he’ll find when he looks around. Kunpimook’s learned that all it takes to make you depressed in this world is to look around, because there are always things to be sad about.

Eventually, though, the need to learn about his surroundings surpasses the fear of it- and he looks first to his right, where a window’s letting in soft beams of moonlight that are swallowed promptly by the brighter, harsher light of the table lamp. Then, with some difficulty, he turns to his left.

There’s a bedside table, and under the fruit bowl there’s a note, signed off by Jackson, he realises, and a telephone. His hands shake violently when he reaches over for it, but he gets a hold of it anyway, and after a moment of scanning it he realises it’s asking him to call the older man the moment he wakes up.

But Kunpimook puts the note down, straining over to reach the telephone with the hand that isn’t attached to the drip, and finally, he dials a number he knows from heart, but hasn’t dialled in the past five years.

It’s a little sad, and a little frightening, how long it’s taken him to come to this decision, but even so he still hesitates when he punches each button on the wireless phone, deliberating with every number, but then the call’s going through before he can stop himself.

He realises on the third ring that he has no idea what time it is now, or there, for that matter. His mind’s too numb to calculate the time difference. On the sixth ring, he’s sorely considering giving up, but then a woman picks up, her voice painfully familiar to Kunpimook’s ears, a little tired and a little confused.

“ _Jark krai?”_

His breath catches in his chest as he parts his lips to reply, a tear already leaving its salty, warm trail down the side of his face as he does so.

_“Mae?”_  



	7. symmetrophobic

  
[part VI](http://symmetrophobic.livejournal.com/6950.html)

It’s morning when a rush of relief, and at the same time, guilt, fills Kunpimook, when he sees the figure pass by the glass pane looking out into the corridor, and struggles to sit up as Yugyeom walks in, dressed casually, almost, eyes lighting up at the sight of him.

“I didn’t know when you’d be awake,” those same, protective arms come to wrap around him, carefully avoiding the drip, and Kunpimook hugs back, relishing in the warmth he’s had the privilege to become so accustomed to. “I was planning to stay here the whole day if you weren’t awake yet.”

“How’ve you been?” Kunpimook asks worriedly, thinking about Jaebum and the look he’d given Yugyeom once he’d raised the alarm. “Did Jaebum give you a hard time?”

Yugyeom lets out a dry laugh, sitting in the chair at the bedside. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen him around at all after I broke his nose yesterday.”

Kunpimook’s eyes widen. “You… _what_?”

“He crossed a line,” Yugyeom says with a bitter sort of smile, fingers tightening a little around Kunpimook’s hand. “The cyanide- that’s what was in your food, it was his idea. I think he assumed Jackson was the one behind Youngjae’s death, as some crazy stunt to try and get one up on him, and he thinks it’s because you told him. So I guess he thought poisoning you would be suitable retaliation.”

Kunpimook doesn’t even have it in him to be _mad_ at the fact Jaebum was the one behind him- he’s too amazed. “So you _hit_ him?”

“Several times, I think,” Yugyeom says it with a sort of carefree air. “I don’t even remember what happened- he just kept talking about how you had it coming and everything after the ambulance left and I think I just snapped,” his voice wavers a little, remembering the incident. “I-…I really thought you were going to die, you know, so hearing him shoot his mouth off like that- I don’t know. I apologised and everything afterwards, but it sort of felt really good doing it.”

Kunpimook lets out a choked sort of laugh. “That’s _great._ I’m not even being sarcastic right now, or saying it because he poisoned me or cheated on Jinyoung, it’s about time somebody did that. So what now?”

“Dunno,” Yugyeom shrugs. “Jinyoung probably thought I went crazy- but he didn’t try to stop me. I think he thought Jaebum deserved a bit of that too. I think he’ll let me pass it off as temporary insanity, and Jaebum wouldn’t want to air his dirty laundry in public by making something like this blow up- I’m his cousin, after all, people might get suspicious. So things go back to normal, I guess,” he flicks a stray piece of lint off the knee of his trousers, looking unconcerned. “It’s not like crazy shit like this hasn’t happened before without everyone pretending it’s all fine the next day.”

“If only they knew,” Kunpimook chuckles bitterly, and for a moment there, basking in that happiness, he almost regrets what he’d done the previous night. But he forces up the courage to tell Yugyeom anyway, because the younger man deserves to know as much.

“Yugyeom,” he starts, gut twisting in apprehension when the other man turns to him, gaze questioning in that casual, trusting air that they’ve worked so hard to attain between them. “I’m-…I called my mom, yesterday night,” he holds his breath. “I’m going home. I was thinking about Jinyoung, Jaebum, and-…and what Youngjae said,” he’s looking at the sheets now, unable to look the other man in the eye. “There’s nothing here for people like us. We’re selling our humanity in exchange for _money_ , Gyeom, I can’t-…I can’t. I’m going home.”

There’s a pause, before he feels soft fingers under his chin, slowly tilting him to face the other man, and though there’s nothing but a gentle sort of expression on Yugyeom’s face, Kunpimook still winces.

“Great,” he mimics, grinning slightly. “It’s about time you did that,” Yugyeom leans back in his chair, still regarding him tenderly, and though his mouth barely moves his eyes are smiling. “I think I’m going home too. Yesterday-…yesterday was enough,” he rubs his eyes tiredly. “I’m going to hand in my resignation and go away for a while. Jaebum-hyung might find some way to object, but I’ll figure it out.”

“That’s _great_ ,” Kunpimook can barely believe his ears, a smile spreading on his face, reaching forward though his body’s still weak to hold Yugyeom’s hand, like it’s assuring this is happening, that this isn’t some wonderful dream he’s about to wake up from. “I’ll stay as long as you want me to, until it’s over-…”

“No, you should go home while you can,” Yugyeom laughs, smoothing a thumb over the other man’s knuckles. “Jackson was talking about letting you go home to “recover from the experience”, you should take the chance while you can.”

“How is he?” Kunpimook’s attention is turned back to the note, and the uncomfortable way Jackson had spoken when Kunpimook called that morning.

“The media’s spinning it such that it looks like Jackson was the actual target, some sort of corporate espionage, but you got poisoned instead because you two ordered the same things, and the plates got switched,” Yugyeom shrugs. “The police are investigating, but the commissioner’s in Jaebum-hyung’s pocket, so chances of him getting charged are slim to none,” then, “I think Jackson-hyung feels guilty. You ought to capitalise on that.”

Kunpimook rolls his eyes. “We’re over that, remember?”

Yugyeom laughs wearily. “It’ll be hard, getting used to the new lifestyle.”

“What? Of not politely pilfering off every rich person in sight?” Kunpimook chuckles. “We’ll manage. Besides, it’s not like Bangkok’s got a lot of those anyway.”

The younger man’s laughter peters out a little, and when Kunpimook looks back he’s a little taken by the depth of emotion in his eyes.

“We’ll…we’ll still be talking, won’t we?”

That freezes something in Kunpimook, really sinks the idea in that he’s going _home_ , back home to Thailand to his family, away from Korea where Yugyeom is. But this place holds too many bad memories, too many nightmares, for him right now, to be able to entertain the thought of staying, or even coming back, yet.

“Sure,” Kunpimook says a little softer, before letting out a nervous laugh. “There’s always Facebook. And if you’d stop being such a prude I could introduce you to Instagram.”

“For real, though,” Yugyeom says, and there’s a hint of urgency in his voice this time, before, like everything else he feels, he apparently reins it in, and the emotion’s replaced by a sort of resigned contentment. “I’ll miss you.”

“I’m not _dying_ , sheesh,” Kunpimook laughs, but he his grip on Yugyeom’s hand tightens. “We’ll stay in touch.”

*

Yugyeom’s right. Jackson does come in, almost an hour after Yugyeom leaves, looking vaguely uncomfortable and sort of guilty. He agrees to Kunpimook’s request for resignation immediately, as if he’s almost relieved.

“My PA will settle your flight back,” he says, waving the issue away hastily. “Your medical fees too. Don’t worry about a thing.”

“It’s alright, really, I can-…” Kunpimook starts.

“No, it’s fine,” Jackson says, looking a little strained, like he’s making a plea. “Let me.”

And that’s it, that’s the end of their stint together in Korea, and though it can hardly be called an ending, maybe that’s not such a bad thing after all.

Kunpimook’s almost sorry to say goodbye.

(He accepts the invitation to call up anytime with grateful warmth, though, _just in case_.)

*

The next week passes in an agonising blur, and Kunpimook only realises what he’s actually doing when he’s standing at the departure gate, passport in hand and carry-on bag over his shoulder, Yugyeom at his side.

“I’ll get in contact when I touch down,” Kunpimook’s babbling, a little from the nervousness of finally going home and mostly from the thought of leaving Yugyeom behind. “It’ll take me some time to get home after that though, but my father said he might be picking me up, so I won’t be able to call until-…”

Yugyeom sweeps him into a hug, quashing every last residual hint of nerves, and Kunpimook lets out a shaky exhale, winding his fingers into the fabric of Yugyeom’s shirt.

“I’ll miss you too,” he finally blurts out, one week late, and Yugyeom’s shoulders shake slightly with mirth at that.

“There’s always Facebook,” he grins softly after they part. “And I got Instagram just for you, so stop complaining.”

Kunpimook doesn’t stop smiling all the way until he gets to the plane.

*

He stumbles many times coming home- struggling to speak Thai to the immigrations officer, perspiring involuntarily in the rush of hot air that greets him through the linkway the moment he steps out of the plane, but then he walks into the arrival hall and sees the embarrassingly huge group of people, all carrying signs with his name written in wonky Korean (as some sort of joke, he supposes), standing behind the barrier.

And for a moment there it feels like he’d never left.

His mother cries a lot and his father insists on carrying his luggage until they get to the car, and his little sister fusses over him till it’s suffocating, in a nice kind of way. It chokes him up a little, how they’ve all changed so much in the blink of an eye, like he’s woken up from a coma, come back to life five years too late.

But then he goes home and realises his brothers have filled his old room with giant pink and white heart-shaped balloons, and amidst a lot of exasperated laughter and chasing and popping sounds, something tells him maybe it isn’t too late after all.

*

It’s hard, trying to tear down an old life and build up a new one from scratch, and a few weeks into Kunpimook’s return, a restlessness starts to wear into his bones.

Yugyeom messages, as promised, but they’re both busier, both fighting to regain control over their lives, both wondering if they’ve made the right decision and trying to forget the scars from years past, and it isn’t long before daily messages start coming once every few days, once a week, then fortnightly.

Then Kunpimook realises he hasn’t spoken to Yugyeom for a month.

He passes by a bicycle cart selling magazines in the streets on the way to his new job, and the familiar print of hangul on a glitzy teen magazine catches his eye, long enough for him to feel something dull tug at his heartstrings, mourning the death of one of the relationships Kunpimook’s held the most dearly.

He isn’t stupid- he’d accepted a long time ago that this long distance relationship would never work out, but there’s a stupid, naive part of him that secretly hopes he’d be surprised, that they’d defy the norm and live out the quietly happy ending he’d envisioned so hopefully. Sometimes he finds himself staring and wondering where Yugyeom is, how he’s doing, if he’s broken off from Jaebum entirely or if he’s still hovering, lost in transition, struggling alone.

*

Nightmares come sometimes, of sweet wine and choking breaths and a crushing loneliness, and Kunpimook wakes up wishing desperately Yugyeom were here to soothe him back to sleep.

It builds up, month after month, until a year later and he’s walking to the bus stop, and a group of schoolgirls pass him by, giggling and talking loudly, hair wet and tumbling down their schoolbags, a giveaway that they’d just finished up with some extra sports activities at school and are going home. Kunpimook recognises the uniform at once- it’s that same suffocating blue, same reek of money, same designer schoolbags and lacrosse sticks, held carelessly in hands too small to understand the weight of their actions, and it hits him so hard he has to stop in the middle of the pavement.

His eyes catch on one of the girls at the side, clutching to the wrist of the girl in the middle, chattering with an electric, overflowing sort of excitement that stops automatically every time the other girl opens her mouth to speak. It sends a painful, bitter kind of jolt through him when he recognises the look on her face: the carefully reverent elation, calculated to brighten in approval whenever the other girl says anything at all. For a moment, then, he’s just standing there, watching them until they disappear around the darkening corner, until their voices fade into the rush of evening traffic.

It’s impossible to do anything that night, crippled by the thought of that girl and the hundreds of others out there in the world just like her, (just like him), about to blunder their way into what would become one of the biggest regrets of their lives and completely oblivious to that fact.

It settles on his chest like a boulder, the heavy burden of wisdom and this burning desire to reach out desperately, pluck all those girls and boys in the world out there out of their internal thunderstorms, wake them up to the fact that a meaning beyond the poison of the lifestyles of the rich and powerful lies ahead, waiting for them to find it, if only they don’t succumb to the venom of their desires first.

It’s so frustrating, this helplessness to do anything but watch while it’s happening, while it’s happening everywhere around him, to adults, to children, men and women and girls and boys and he can’t do a _thing_.

(Or at least, that’s what he’s been told.)

He ends up making the decision a lot faster than he thought he would.

The phone is heavy in his hands when he makes the call, and part of him just wants to put it down, stop this crazy stunt, ask himself properly _what the hell_ he’s doing (he definitely hasn’t been thinking about it for the past year, no) but she picks up much too fast for him to change his mind.

“Mint?” Kunpimook’s voice is nervous over the telephone when he speaks, fumbling a little over the childhood nickname his friends had given the woman he’s speaking to. She’s the daughter of an MP, known for having considerable clout in the Constitution of Thailand, whom he’d known from school, one of the few people he still kept vaguely in touch with to this day. “This is Kunpimook, uh, remember me? From school?”

He wonders _again_ what the hell he’s doing for a while, if he’s crazy, and if she’ll think so too, but then she replies, voice clear and direct, probably from years in Oxford doing law and politics.

“Kunpimook-ah?” she sounds puzzled, if not a little curious. “Why? Are we all having another reunion?”

“No, I just-…” he inhales deeply, reciting the summary he’d rehearsed in his mind just before making the call, clenching and unclenching his fingers around the phone before continuing. “I’m thinking of-…of doing something, and I really need your advice. Can you hear me out?”

There’s a pause on the line for a while- Mint had never been a stupid girl (her mother being a top researcher, and her daddy a diplomat, probably helped with that) and Kunpimook knows she’s considering if this is worth her time. But then-…

“Sure,” she says, still inquisitive. “But no promises. What is it you’ve got in mind?”

*

It’s slow, but he makes it work.

Kunpimook drags in contacts from school, smiles and talks passionately and paints glorious pictures in their minds, and though he’s shaking inside from the conflict and the fear, for once in his life he knows what he’s doing, he knows what he wants and it’s only the thought that he isn’t doing it for himself.

He’s doing it for that schoolgirl in the street, doing it for the fresh college graduate discovering that the only way to power is by clawing into the people with it, doing it for the frustrated women in this world under that corporate glass ceiling, forced to marry into affluence in order to obtain it.

And bit by bit people start coming to him with open arms, like-minded men and women, tired and confused and mesmerised by this notion. It’s like a dream, discovering all these people who’d once been through the same struggle, gone through the mill and come out the other side, weary and angry and burdened, carrying a weathered sort of pained injustice that lights up at the idea that they can change it, they can change it for the future, for the better.

So Kunpimook stands as it all works itself out, gradual but steady, feeling the knot in his chest loosen, but with a melancholy sort of twinge.

_Only one thing’s missing._

*

It takes five years.

Half a decade after Korea and Kunpimook’s wandering down the street near _Wat Phra Kaew_ , trying to remember where he’s supposed to meet a friend. He notes the palpable presence of loud foreigners and bustling tour groups with some amusement- this temple is one of the main tourist attractions of Thailand, after all, especially in Bangkok, and it’s to be expected.

It’s also to be expected that he whirls around to look at the sound of a painfully familiar language, trying to be heard over the throngs of tourists.

Kunpimook can’t help it, this compulsive need to turn around and crane his neck to look every time he hears someone speak Korean here, in that vague, stupid hope that he might just turn around and see what he’s looking for one day. You’d think he’d have learned his lesson after five years of having his hopes let down, but Kunpimook supposes he’s still as stubborn as the day he’d left.

“Tell them we need to hurry,” it’s a man, brown tips dyed into his hair and glasses on, dressed in the usual tourist wear- cargo pants and a tee shirt, perspiring in the tropical heat, speaking tersely to another woman in Korean, and Kunpimook’s shoulders slump slightly in disappointment.

He’s just about to turn away when that same man looks around in half a panic, clutching on to his map. And with the one word he says after that, everything takes a hundred and eighty degree turn.

“ _Yugyeom_!” And Kunpimook snaps to attention, eyes wide, straining to look over the heads of the people in the way.

He’s standing in the middle of the crowd, disregarding the annoyed looks that people shoot him when he’s in their way, eyes wide and palms sweaty, trying to see where the man’s looking at. There can’t be many people in South Korea with that name, right? There’s still hope, isn’t there?

“Yugyeom, we really need to go _now,_ the bus is coming at any moment. Yerin-…”

He turns back to the woman, who’s laughing lightly at the sight of him looking like he’s about to go into cardiac arrest, and then it’s that moment, the moment Kunpimook’s heart stops when a head rises a little above the crowd, like the man’s getting up, probably from reading one of the inscriptions on the floor.

“Hyung, relax,” and that voice hits Kunpimook like a vortex, sending everything that’d once actually been relatively stable in his head into a crazy whirl, bouncing off the walls of his mind.

_This_ _can’t be true_ , _he can’t be here_ -…

“Don’t get so stressed,” the woman’s speaking again, laughing, heading in the other direction. “I’ll go gather the group first, you try to calm down.”

Kunpimook’s standing, staring, unable to believe what he’s seeing- it’s _Yugyeom_ , Yugyeom standing ten metres away, looking as ridiculously good as ever five years later, even just in jeans and a tee and a knapsack, Yugyeom in _Thailand_ , of all places, and he thinks he’s just about as panicked as that guy over there right now.

That panic escalates tenfold when Yugyeom turns to look over the crowd, as if searching for someone, and his eyes drift down, gradual and a little concerned, until the breathtaking moment that they lock with Kunpimook’s, and stay there, quiet and searching.

And in that moment the earth could’ve broken in half and the sky could’ve fallen and Kunpimook wouldn’t have noticed, because of the galaxy so much more worth watching in Yugyeom’s eyes, a beauty compacted in eternities of starlight and secrecy across volumes in time he hasn’t been able to look upon in so long, and it seems to steal all the air from his lungs, slow down the chaos of the world around them into a muffled standstill. He can hear the pound of blood in his veins in his ears, can feel the heat rising around him, drawing out beads of sweat on his forehead though he’s already so used to the climate, and in that moment he wishes it could remain this way forever.

Then a clear, soft sort of smile starts to tug at the edges of the other man’s mouth, and he draws closer, flowing with the crowd easily towards Kunpimook, who feels like he’s rooted to the ground, unable to do anything but stand and wait with a shocked awe as Yugyeom closes the distance between them.

“Yugyeom?” the syllables are so foreign on his lips they almost ache with the happiness of forming them again, but his voice is small, tentative, barely audible over the clamour of the holiday crowd. “What-…” his mouth is so dry it’s hard to speak. “What are you doing here?”

“Field trip,” Yugyeom says, as if Kunpimook’s supposed to understand what that _means_ , because aren’t field trips for _kids_ -…

“Saem!” a boy fights his way out of the crowd to reach them, bumping accidentally into Yugyeom’s back in his haste. “Saem, you’d better come soon, I think Jaehyung-seonsaengnim is going _mad_ -…”

He notices Kunpimook for the first time, then, who’s trying to connect the keyword that’d just fallen from this boy’s lips to the man standing in front of him right now.

“Do you _know_ him?” the boy’s voice is loud in an arrogant sort of way, the type of tone that doesn’t know it’s being arrogant at all because the owner’s spoken like this all his life.

“Don’t be rude, Hanbin,” Yugyeom chastises him. “Greet him, go on.”

“ _Sawaddikrap_ ,” the boy bows rather reluctantly, fumbling with the Thai word.

“You’re-…” Kunpimook feels a slow sort of warmth start to spread in him, overflowing and sweet and comforting. “You’re a teacher now?”

“Who is he? How come he knows how to speak Korean?” Hanbin cuts in loudly, but Jaehyung’s panicked voice rings out over the crowd, and Yugyeom turns back in concern.

“Go back first, don’t make Jaehyung-seonsaengnim worry,” Yugyeom pushes Hanbin in the direction of the group of students now gathering, where Jaehyung is, whilst he reaches into his pocket for something. Kunpimook feels his heart rate speed up even more (if that’s possible) when Yugyeom takes a step closer towards him, to mutter something in his ear.

“I got to go now but-…” he’s interrupted by another anguished shout of _Yugyeom_ by the distressed teacher behind them, and Kunpimook feels the other man take his hand, pressing a name card to a hotel into his palm. “Come see me this evening, we’ll let the kids back into the hotel by eight, at the latest-…” _Kim Yugyeom, get over here now, the bus-…_ , “please,” Yugyeom’s voice holds a secret, a plea, of sorts, and it manages to draw Kunpimook in effortlessly like that first verbal tussle had, five years ago, at Mark’s party. Then he’s gone, disappearing quickly into the crowd to herd the kids towards the bus.

That leaves Kunpimook standing alone, slightly dazed, the name card to the hotel still in his hand, and now late for his meeting.

*

The day passes in an excruciatingly slow blur, just one event happening after another that Kunpimook barely registers, as he waits impatiently for night to fall, for another encounter to assure him that the afternoon wasn’t just some crazy dream. At seven forty-five he finds the hotel, some five-star establishment just a little outside the busiest area of Bangkok, all lit up and glittering like the hope that’s just starting to spark within him.

It’s grander than he’d expected for a kids’ field trip, but he supposes he should understand why when he’s seated in the lobby, and Yerin, the lady from before, if he isn’t wrong, shepherds the kids in, reminding them gently to be quiet.

They’re all rich, all obviously born into some ridiculous affluence or another, obvious in the way they speak and the way they hold themselves and their designer luggage and accessories. It makes sense- in a distorted kind of way, like Kunpimook’s missing the pieces somewhere.

Yugyeom’s sent the last pair of kids up, two girls, when his eyes finally connect with Kunpimook’s, where he’s seated at one of the couches in the hotel lobby. A smile lights up his face, and it’s hard to believe that Kunpimook still feels the same way he did five years ago seeing that smile.

He exchanges a few words with the other teachers in the lobby, quiet and quick, before he’s heading over, and Kunpimook feels an anxiety bubbling in the pit of his stomach when Yugyeom reaches him.

“Want a drink?” he asks, then, like they’re back in Korea, like he’s picking up right from where they’d left off, and though there’s an indignity somewhere in the maelstrom of emotions currently bouncing around Kunpimook’s head, he nods, with a faint smile.

*

“So I spent a year after that doing child psychology and early education- they took into account my social sciences and arts degrees, and helped me get a permit to teach literature and everything, so,” Yugyeom shrugs, over the iced coffee in his hands. The streets are still humid but cooler at this time of the day, and they’re seated outside a convenience store near the hotel, facing a deserted carpark. It’s a far cry from the twenty-dollar cocktails they once used to sip, but somehow Kunpimook likes it better this way. “It all worked out pretty well after a while.”

“It’s-…it’s nice to hear that,” Kunpimook doesn’t know why the thought sits so well with him- it feels complete, feels right, somehow.

“Did I seem out of place?” Yugyeom asks, a little amused, and Kunpimook immediately shakes his head.

“No, no, it’s right, it feels like-…like what you would’ve done, you know?” he says, stumbling over words in his haste to get them out. “I’m glad.”

“I know I’ve done something right, then,” Yugyeom’s smile is breathtakingly tender, framed by the beams of soft moonlight and streetlamps, and Kunpimook’s overcome by the sudden urge to match his mouth to it, refresh the memory of the imprint that smile had once made against his lips, but he pushes it down, turns away, instead.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” he mutters, grinning anyway, and Yugyeom chuckles.

“I…” the younger man leans over a little, though they’re already side by side on the bench, a curious look on his face. “I heard you started a charity campaign, though? Promoting a fair workplace, and everything?”

“Oh, that,” Kunpimook flushes, waving it away. “It-…it’s nothing, really, I had a lot of help from loads of people,” he shrugs, averting Yugyeom’s eyes. “I just felt I had to do something, after Korea, you know? I couldn’t just-…just stand there and watch everything happen. And it worked, I guess, I feel like more people-…” he winces a little. “More people _know_ now, I guess.”

Yugyeom’s smiling again when he looks up, that same, soft kind of smile, as warm as his embraces and soothing as his words, and it fills the other man with an inexplicable gratification, like the final thing he needed to know he’d done the right thing.

“Sounds like what you would’ve done,” he mimics, chuckling as he leans back to take another languid drink, like something’s just been resolved for him too.

But something’s still nagging at the other man’s conscience, a question demanding to be answered before Kunpimook can be fully satiated, because it seems suspiciously coincidental, almost.

“Why-…” the question falls from Kunpimook’s lips, then, before he can stop it, voicing the concern that’d been lingering on the tip of his tongue since that afternoon. He hesitates a little. “Just…why a-…a teacher, though?”

Yugyeom hangs his head in what looks like sheepishness, then, tinged with a content sort of resignation.

“Your-…your nightmare,” he starts off, biting his lip as he turns to see Kunpimook’s reaction. “You were mumbling in your sleep, that night, so I,” he says in response to the other man’s surprise. “I kind of put two and two together, you know? And it got me thinking,” Yugyeom shrugs here, like he’s still thinking about it. “You know, what if we could-…sort of, change all that?”

By accident or on purpose, the younger man’s hand settles on Kunpimook’s, blanketing the slender digits in a tender warmth, but the action’s so natural, so honest, that he hardly notices.

“Change their mindsets before they grow up, let them know-…there’s value in life, and not just their own, you know?” Yugyeom chuckles. “It’s ridiculous sometimes- the parents can be nightmares when they want to, but I feel like…like it’s worth it, you know?”

“So you became a teacher?” it makes sense, it does, and the resolution in Kunpimook’s chest warms further.

“It seemed the best thing to do at the time,” Yugyeom laughs. “I think Jaebum-hyung’s set some corporate boycott on me, because I didn’t get accepted by any of the companies associated with his after I wanted to start working again, but that’s a good thing, I guess, because I’m here now,” he smiles knowingly. “Here with you.”

Kunpimook lets out a choked exhale, trying to roll his eyes and failing because he agrees one hundred percent on that. “How’s that working out for you so far?”

“Great,” Yugyeom laughs. “It’s almost a fair trade.”

“ _Almost_ ,” Kunpimook smacks his hand away, threatening to spill coffee on them both. “Yeah, right.”

This is where Yugyeom conveniently leans in, catching the other man completely off guard, and Kunpimook’s enlightened to the fact that his kisses haven’t changed one bit, still just as gorgeous, just as breathtaking, except this time, unlike the fierce, hungry passion that’d devoured them back in Korea, this one’s sweeter, gentler, like they’ve got all the time in the world to pour their love over and there’s no need to rush. It’s like the perfectly fulfilling conclusion to the prologue of their relationship, the opening to the beginning of their happily ever after, and Kunpimook wonders if he’s ever felt so content before in his life.

Kunpimook unconsciously licks his lips after they part, reliving the taste of their kisses, but Yugyeom’s eyes are wondering, worried, slightly, lips parted with the held breath of a rehearsed but unasked question.

“Kunpimook-ah, I-…I know it’s not fair of me to ask, because you’ve got your family, your job, but-…have you ever, you know,” Yugyeom stutters a little here, and Kunpimook already knows, with a nervous apprehension, what he’s going to ask. “Thought about-…about expanding your campaign overseas?”

The thought sinks properly only when Yugyeom says it, only when he really asks, what he’s pleading of from Kunpimook.

“I have contacts in Seoul, they’ll be more than happy to help, they just need someone’s guidance,” a stream of words flows forth from his lips, like these are reasons he’s thought over and put down on paper and memorised for a moment like this. “You’ll be able to go back regularly to see your family- your fares will be subsidised if we work out the government grants right, and-…and we’ll be able to work out your lodging and everything just fine. And you don’t have to worry about your job, your qualifications and everything-…”

“Yes.”

“…-are more than enough,” Yugyeom comes to a breathless stop, and for a moment it’s silent between the two of them, struggling to comprehend what’s just been said, to think properly about the repercussions of this decision.

_Family. Friends. Campaign._ Kunpimook’s remembering bits and pieces of his life here now, each one weighing heavier and heavier on the opposing scale, but the promise of something greater, something higher, lies ahead in the hand that Yugyeom’s offering to him now.

Yugyeom must be able to sense the conflict in his head, because he backs off, and the moment defuses. “I-…I don’t expect you to make a decision now, you must want to talk about it with your family first, and everything, but-…but when you make up your mind-…” his sentence seems to end at the edge of a cliff here, overlooking a gorge of endless possibilities laced with painful sacrifice, but the hope that balloons into his words takes Kunpimook’s attention away from it, makes it better. “We’ll get in touch?”

Kunpimook finds Yugyeom’s hand, laces their fingers and settles it between them on the bench, and it calms the butterflies in his stomach from their tangents of apprehension and anticipation, reminds him that they’re here now, with each other, and that it’s what counts.

“I will,” he promises, lost in thought, hovering over the possibility of _going back_ , back to all the nightmares and the fear, away from his family and the home he’s just rebuilt for himself here, and for a moment he’s terrified of the mistake he could potentially be making here. But then he think about Yugyeom, the only source of strength he’d been able to rely on to face it all, and suddenly, he feels safe. He feels okay.

Not impenetrable, not invincible, not immortal, but okay. And maybe okay works for him now.

He’s so lost in thought he almost doesn’t notice when Yugyeom moves, pulling something out of his knapsack to place gently on his lap, shaking Kunpimook from his musings.

“What…?” he picks the book up, turns it over, and even in the dim light he can tell at once what it is- why’d Yugyeom bring it here? And why would he pass it to him? “You brought this?”

“You wouldn’t believe what kids these days are doing for literature classes,” Yugyeom chuckles, and with deft fingers he reaches over, pushing the worn cover back and flipping through the pages easily. In the poor streetlight Kunpimook still manages to catch the highlighting, still in the same lilac and indigo he’d once been so eager to read, and it passes in a blur until he realises they’re at the back of the book, at the end of the story.

Then Kunpimook sees the new highlighting, one he’d never caught before, the final memento to the story, in a new colour- blue, this time.

_Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther…. And one fine morning——_

_So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past._

Amidst the ability to lie, the ability to beg, to manipulate, then, Kunpimook realises they’ve unlocked something that breaks all that, that manifests beginning from the bottom of their hearts to their lips and fingertips. It’s an ironic idealism, a senseless hope, that consumes them, what both makes them vulnerable and saves them, a weapon and a shield, and it draws them to each other like a magnet. Helpless but safe. Suspended but assured. This is the home they’ve created for the two of them in their hearts, waiting to be inhabited.

“I missed you,” Yugyeom says finally, barely murmuring the words, so close Kunpimook can feel the warmth radiating from his body, reaching out and shrouding him in a blissful, invisible embrace he’s missed so badly.

And all of a sudden he’s sure he can face it, sure he can stand up and fight against the current and come out of this battle alive, as long as he’s got Yugyeom by his side, as long as they’re pulling through together, hand in hand, side by side.

For a moment, then, Kunpimook pushes the worries out of his head, pushing the fear and uncertainties away in favour of focusing his full attention on the moment at hand, lets himself be selfish and think only about how much he’s longed to feel this again, how much he’s pined for this for the five years they’ve been apart.

_Best case scenario, we never meet again. Worst case scenario, we tear each other apart._

It seems like an eternity as he closes the distance between them, and for a moment there’s just the far-off sound of occasional traffic, the low hum of the streetlight, the sound of the night going to sleep around them, and he smiles against Yugyeom’s lips, more peaceful than anticipatory, more secure than fearful.

“I missed you too.”

_Middle ground always did seem the best idea._

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [jagged little pill](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3305582) by [chanyeolanda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chanyeolanda/pseuds/chanyeolanda)




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